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The 

Surrendered 

Life 

By 
JAMES H. McCONKEY 



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THE ''^'^ 

SURRENDERED 

LIFE 



Bible Studies and Addresses on The 
Yielded Life. 



By JAMES H. McCONKEY, 



First Edltioa. 



1903 

PUBLISHED BY FRED KELKER 

P. 0. Box 216, Harrisburg, Pa. 

U. S. A. 



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Copyright 1903, 

By FRED KELKER 

Harrisburg, Pa. 



1. 
^ studies 



tbe Surrendered Life, 7 

What? /5 

Wb9? 27 

Bow? 59 

then, 5/ 



studies 



tb^ Surrendered Life. 

AT no period in the last century of the history 
of God's people has there been more em- 
phasis placed upon the Christian life and 
walk than at the present. For long years the 
hearts of God's true children have longed for 
the fullest, richest, closest spiritual life attain- 
able in Christ Jesus, That there was such a 
deeper, higher, broader life in Christ than the 
lives of many of His children were exemplifying, 
was admitted by all. The Word of God prom- 
ised it; the lives of the early disciples were 
resplendent with its glory; the hearts of God's 
devout children clung to it with pathetic per- 
sistence. That self-same tenaciousness of faith 
in the possibility of such a fullness of Christian 
experience was the Spirit-born and Spirit-fed 
proof of its existence. Men's hearts would not 
yield their faith in its existence because the Spirit 
who dwelt within them would not suffer such 
faith to perish. Seeing then that he could not 
banish the vision of the glory-crowned peak, the 
arch-adversary sought to becloud the pathway 
to it. Knowing that they would not surrender 



S THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

their faith in the distant haven he essayed to con- 
fuse, by a maze of misleading lines, the chart that 
guided weary seekers to it. As for a thousand 
years he had blinded the way to the heart-resting 
peace with God, so now he diligently set himself 
to darken the path to the heart-keeping peace of 
God. Error and false teaching of divers and 
manifold forms swarmed to the becloudment. 
Perfectionism ; sanctification of the flesh ; eradi- 
cation of inbred sin from that in which a holy 
God declares there "dwelleth no good thing;" 
holiness teaching with much of truth, yet such 
serious error in the ignoring and wresting of 
God's word as has led to pitiable disappointment, 
and spiritual disaster ; — all these have hung about 
the true pathway to fullness of life in Christ, as 
the mist and mirage beset the toiling traveler 
eager to reach his journey's end. 

All the while the Spirit knew this pathway. 
All through these weary years of gloom and error 
this truth was flooded with the light of an error- 
less sim.pHcity in the mind of the Spirit : all this 
time it was already revealed in His Word. While 
men wandered in the labyrinth of their own dog- 
mas: while they encrusted the truth with the 
cheap gloss of their own human opinions, He 
could not make plain to them what v/as so clear 
to Him. But as soon as they began to give to His 
naked Word that place of supreme authority they 
had been all unconsciously awarding to creeds, 
and to man-made comments upon that Word, the 
true light began to burst forth. So it is through 



STUDIES. 9 

the earnest, searching, trustful study of that Word 
to-day that, out from the error, ignorance, and 
false teaching of the century is emerging, in all 
its glory and preciousness, the truth which lets 
us into the secret of a full and triumphant life in 
Christ Jesus. 

The body of the: believer is the temple o? 
THE Holy Spirit, who comes in at conversion 

TO abide forever. To WALK IN THE SpIRIT, 
INSTEAD OF WALKING IN THE FLESH AS HE HAS 
HITHERTO DONE, IS THE WHOLE SECRET OF THE 
BELIEVER''S LIFE OF POWER, PRIVILEGE AND PEACE. 
To THUS WALK IN THE SpIRIT THE FIRST ESSEN- 
TIAL IS THE ABSOLUTE YIELDING TO GOD OF THE 
LIFE WHICH THE BELIEVER HAS HITHERTO HIM- 
SELF CONTROLLED AND DIRECTED. 

These great truths are clearly set forth in God's 
Word, and nowhere more clearly than in the writ- 
ings of the great apostle. As we walk in the 
Spirit we shall not sin (Gal. v. i6) : as we walk 
in the Spirit v/e mortify the deeds of the flesh 
(Rom. viii. 13) : as we walk in the Spirit His law 
makes us free from the law of sin and death 
(Rom. viii. 2) : as we walk in the Spirit we show 
ourselves to be true Sons of God (Rom. viii. 14) : 
as we v/alk in the Spirit we are freed from the 
bondage of the law (Gal. v. 18) : as we walk in 
the Spirit we are made like unto Jesus Christ 
(H. Cor. iii. 18), and the image of His glorious 
life is reproduced in all its features of love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, micekness, etc. 
(Gal. V. 22.) In short he who has learned to 



10 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

walk in the Spirit walks in God, instead of in 
Self; for him to live is Christ: What higher 
summit than this is there in Christian experience ? 

Surrender needful that God may have His 
WAY WITH us. 

But how can that Spirit lead, purify, transform, ^ 
fill, and use a life unless it is yielded to Him? 
What can the potter do with the unyielded clay? 
How can God fashion the unyielded life? If every 
idol He shatters is secretly mourned: if every 
chastening stroke is bitterly denounced: if ev- 
ery higher purpose is resisted by a hostile will, 
how can He mould, and transform, and bless? 
Surely the ship which God is not piloting is des- 
tined to disastrous wreck : surely the harp which 
God does not attune will ever be a jangle of dis- 
cordant notes to His listening ear. If we would 
have them restored to their perfection, we yield 
our disordered time-piece to the watchmaker : our 
costly gem with its broken setting to the jeweler: 
our wounded, bleeding limb to the hand of the 
surgeon. Can we do less toward God with the 
priceless treasure of life if we would have it meet 
our highest aspiration? Wherefore the Word of 
God calls upon us again and again to yield, yield, , 
YIELD ourselves to God (Rom. vi. 13, 16, 19) \i^ 
we would have His Spirit hold full sway in our 
lives. He will not compel such surrender. He 
wants consecration, not coercion. But His fullest 
purpose of grace, blessing, and ministry is simply 
baffled in the life which will not yield to Him. 



STUDIES. 11 

Nothmg is more striking in Christ's earthly life 
than this attitude of absolute submission to the 
Father: 'Xo, I come to do Thy will" was the 
complete expression of His early life and min- 
istry. He came, as He says, not to do His own 
will: not to speak His own words: not to seek 
His own glory: not to teach His own doctrines. 
In all these He repeatedly emphasized His entire 
submission to the Father, His entire effacement 
of self in the conduct and shaping of His own 
earthly career. Now the servant is not greater 
than his Lord : as the Father sent Him, even so 
has He sent us into the world. He, as the Son of 
God, did this for an ensample to us who are sons. 
Wherefore if He, the sinless, spotless Son of God,, 
needed to yield His earthly life wholly to the 
Father, how much more do we? Almost every 
page of God's Word calls us to follow in his foot- 
steps. But where is there one which exempts us ? 
Every consideration of obedience, of fullness of 
blessing, of closeness of walk with God, of glori- 
fication of His name, and of successful service 
and fruit-bearing for Him, calls us to follow 
Christ's example and yield ourselves unreservedly 
to God, to do His will and not our own. Many 
who are saved are not servants. They rejoice in 
salvation, but shirk from discipleship. They covet 
the crown, but shun the yoke. "While we were 
yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. v. 8). 
"He died, that they which live should not hence- 
forth live unto themselves, but unto Him which 
died for them" (H. Cor. v. 15). They see in this 



12 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

first text Christ's purpose to save sinners, but they 
do not see in this second Christ's purpose in sav- 
ing. They do not see that He died not only to 
save the Hfe, but use the life after it is saved. Ke 
died not only to bring men into the Kingdom, but 
to make them servants of the King. He wants 
piCt only saved sinners, but surrendered saints. 

Perhaps the most astonishing fact of the relig- 
ious life of to-day is the number of men and 
women, who, thus saved by Christ, are yet unwill- 
ing to yield to Christ, and to live no longer unto 
themselves, but "unto Him." Let this test be 
applied to the average gatliering of Christian men 
and women, and mark the result. Marvelous in- 
deed is it to see that the ratio of God's children 
who joyfully and whole-heartedly respond to it is 
often as small as that of the unsaved who respond 
to the appeal of the gospel of salvation. What 
distrust in the Christ of Love ! What a revelation 
of the kingship of Self in our lives! What a 
cheapening of His sacrifice for us that the vision 
of it instead of impelling us to cast ourselves, our 
all, at His feet, barely stirs us to reluctant and 
stinted gifts from our abundance! Verily, no 
truth of God's Word has suffered more at the 
hands of His children than this oi His call to 
the yielding of the life: none has oftener been 
wounded in the house of its friends. It has suf- 
fered in the frequent woeful failure of God's 
messengers to bring it home tenderly to the lives 
of all His children ; in the sad and repeated failure 
to respond when it is brought home ; and in the 



STUDIES. 13 

every day handling of the truth of consecration 
with a flippancy which has made it only a high 
sounding phrase and the consecration meeting 
often a shallow mockery. Yet it stands as the 
supreme act in the believer's life : the threshold of 
blessing and successful service. 

For the first great step of the walk in the Spirit, 
is that yielding of the life which puts us under the 
control of that Spirit. Without this we may, and 
do have times of blessing, in so far as we trust and 
obey God in the acts of our daily life, and thus 
carry out the principle of obedience involved in 
surrender. But it is only through this that our 
whole life can be brought into that perfect align- 
ment vvith God's will for us which makes not only 
isolated acts, but, the whole course of our life, 
always well pleasing unto Him, and a constant 
joy "to ourselves. Myriads of God's children are 
thus doing acts which please the Father, and find- 
ing joy and gladness therein, walk happily with 
Him while His plans are well pleasing to them. 
But when it comes to walking with Kim in the 
dark, and bearing and doing things which their 
own wills v/ould have otherwise, they break down 
at the point of greatest weakness, a point of some 
secret cherished reservation to the whole will of 
God. It is just here that a definite act of sur- 
render to God m blank is of such value. For it is 
a yielding of the life to do and suffer all His v/ill, 
in all things and at all timics, because we have, 
once for all, settled that it is the best thing for us. 
Wondrously steady under chastening and affile- 



14 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

tion does it make our life, to have it thus placed 
wholly and confidingly in His loving grasp. 
Then, when the hour comes to walk with God in 
the twilight of a simple, naked faith, while He 
works in ways that seem hard and strange, we 
follow Him as trustfully in the night of faith as in 
the full noontide of sight. We look back and 
remember the transaction by which we handed all 
things over to Him; we recall His faithfulness, 
and power to guard all that is committed to Him ; 
we remind ourselves of His deathless love for His 
children ; and we quietly leave our life where we 
once, and forever, placed it, confident that the 
hands that bled to save it, are the safest hands to 
keep it. 





"Yield yourselves unto God/' — Romans 6: 13. 

''Present your bodies. unto God.'' — 

Romans 12: i. 

"They first gave their ozvn selves unto the 
Lord." — 2 Corinthians 8 : 5. 

"That he no longer should live the rest of his 
time in the Hesh to the lusts of men, hut to the 
will of God." — I Peter 4 : 2. 

WHAT is the Surrendered Life ? Or, rather, 
what is the act of surrender which opens 
the portals of the Hfe of surrender, of 
consecration to God? The Scriptures quoted at 
the head of this article clearly and explicitly 
answer this query. Surrender, or consecration, is 
the voluntary offering of ourselves unto God to 
do His will instead of our ozvn. Mark the terms, 
for each is significant, and all are simply gathered 
from the body of the texts quoted. A voluntary 
offering; ("yield": "present": "gave"); of our^ 
selves ("yourselves": "your bodies": "their own 
selves") unto God; ("unto God": "unto the 
Lord") "to do His will, instead of our own." i 
Peter 4:2. It is thus : 



16 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

I. AN Oi^FDRING. 

The word consecrate means "to fill the hand.". 
Just as the Jewish worshipper fills his hand with 
the best, richest, and choicest of his own, and 
brought it as an offering to the Lord, so is the 
redeemed child of God to offer himself to God as 
the highest expression of grateful worship he can 
possibly m.ake to the Lord who has redeemed him. 
In the bygone days, when men were sold as 
chattels, a trembling slave stood upon the auction 
block awaiting the result of the last bid which 
was to separate him from wife, children, and all 
that was dear to him in his life of bondage on the 
old plantation. Higher and higher rose the 
bidding until at last it ceased, and the hammer 
of the auctioneer fell. A gentleman stepped up 
to the fettered slave and quickly said: "My man, 
I have bought you." *'Yes, massa," was the 
subdued response. "I have bought you at a 
great price." The bondman nodded a tearful 
assent. ''But more than this," continued the 
purchaser, "1 have bought yoti to set you free," 
and striking off his bonds he said, "Go : you are 
a free man." Thereupon, falling at the feet of 
his deliverer the overjoyed freedman cried out, 
"Oh, Massa ! I am your slave forever !" Even so, 
redeemed one, is our Christ, who bought us with 
His own precious blood, waiting for us to fall at 
His feet and offer Him the life which He has 
purchased and set free. Thus does Paul, once the 
bond-slave of sin, now rejoice to call himself "the 
(voluntary) bond-slave of Jesus Christ." Very 



WHATf 17 

beautifully is the same truth set forth in our 
Lord's offering of Himself to do the will of the 
Father. The passage (Heb. lo: 5,) in which He 
speaks of offering His body to the Father, even 
unto its cruel piercing on the cross, is quoted, 
from Ps. 40: 6. There the striking phrase for^ 
**A body didst thou prepare me," is ''mine ear 
hast thou opened (or bored)." When a slave who 
had become free wished to remain a voluntary 
bondman in the house of the master he had come 
to love, he stood by the door-post while the master 
pierced his ear with an awl. Ever after the 
pierced ear marked him as one who, though en- 
titled to freedom, had joyfully yielded him.self to 
the loved master as a willing slave for life. The 
Holy Spirit uses this figure as a vivid picture of 
the absolute and loving submission to the will of 
the Father of Him who said of Himself, ''I am 
come down from heaven not to do mine own will, 
but the will of Him that sent me," and ''I am 
among you as he that serveth." Even thus would 
God have us, who are all ''Sons of God by faith 
in Christ Jesus," offer ourselves in glad surrender 
to the Father. 

Nor need any humble soul who has so offered 
himself to God ever doubt that he belongs to God. 
For all His children belong to Him before they 
offer themiselves to Him. Consecration does not 
confer ownership, it presumes it. It is not in 
order to be His, but because we are His, that we 
yield up our lives. It is purchase that gives title; 
delivery sim.ply gives possession. The question 
.2 



18 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

is not, "Do I belong to God?" but '*Have I 
yielded to God that which already belongs to 
Him ?" Writing once to a friend concerning this 
point, as to whether one surrendering to God 
could without doubt say, "I am thine," there came 
back this luminous statement: "You are God's 
already, by purchase: now deliver the goods!" 
How true, how simple. "Ye are not your own." 
Why? Because "ye are bought.'' The text 
shows us clearly that the title to our lives is with 
God; the possession with us. The offering to 
God is thus simply giving to God that which 
already belongs to Him by right of purchase. 
Wherefore we need never have any fear of non- 
acceptance*; never any doubt that we are His. 
That was settled when He purchased us; yea 
"before the foundation of the world" He chose 
us in Christ Jesus. The question is, have we 
yielded possession, have we delivered the goods? 
You go to a jeweller and buy a costly diamond, 
paying him for it, and leaving it in his possession 
to be called for later. The next day when you 
call he refuses to deliver it. By law you are its 
rightful ov/ner, but he unjustly keeps you out of 
possession. Even so God in His love rifled 
heaven of its rarest treasure to purchase us, yet 
we may refuse to yield Him the life so ransomed. 
And this brings us to the next thought, that sur- 
render is 

II. A VOLUNTARY OFFKRING. 

There is a threshold which God will not cross : 



WHATf 19 

it is that of human responsibility. He will press 
to its utmost verge to plead, woo, yea, even weep 
at the door of the heart that is refusing Him full 
possession; but He will never force an entrance. 
The most solemn thought about the offering of 
the life is that when the Holy Spirit has done His 
work in convincing us of God's call to it, He 
leaves it with us to yield or not to yield. Even 
while the very Christ of Love stands and pleads 
for our lives, saying, "How often would I," it 
may be said of us, "but ye zuould not/' Into that 
marred visage we may look and say : "Yea, Lord, 
I know that thou hast bought me at an awful cost ; 
I know I am Thine by the highest and holiest 
claim that can be urged upon me, but I am busily 
engrossed in my own wordly plans, pleasures, and 
ambitions, and I do not care to yield my life to 
Thee !" 

In I Samuel lo: 27, we read concerning Saul, 
their king, that "The children of Belial despised 
him, and brought him no presents. But he held 
his peace." So our King left His throne in the 
heavens, took upon Himself the form of a servant, 
and died a death of agony and shame that we 
might be exalted to share His eternal glory. Yet 
we may in effect despise Him, and refuse to 
bring Him that gift of all gifts for which His 
heart is yearning — the gift of ourselves. Withal 
He will not coerce us : He does not clamor 
against us. He simply holds His peace. And 
why? Because Love expects a voluntary return 
from the dearest object of its suft'ering and sacri- 



20 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

fice, and when none is given, Love in grieved 
and wounded silence holds its peace. Look not, 
unyielding one, for the Christ to cry out against 
you: to upbraid and reproach you: to vehe- 
mently command you to this step. The very 
delicacy of Love forbids it. What wife who 
truly loves, after that she has toiled, and suifered, 
and sacrificed, and poured out her very heart's 
blood for him whom she loves, would not shrink 
from the thought of extorting a response to her 
devotion by commands, censure, hints and re- 
proaches? The quick instinct of love looks for 
a spontaneous and voluntary response, and will 
grieve in silence rather than attempt to force it. 
What fragrance is to the rose, color to the sunset 
sky, spotlessness to the falling snow, voluntari- 
ness is to the surrender of the life. The very 
fragrance and sweet savor of Christ's sacrifice is 
that it was the free-will offering of Love. He 
looks for the same from us. This is why the 
Word of God is not filled with command to yield 
the life. This is why, when Christ speaks. He 
cries, "I B]esi:KCH you, brethren." It is Love 
that is speaking. And every page that is 
crimsoned with His blood : every verse that tells 
of His sufferings : every line that chronicles His 
sacrifice, is Love speaking to us. If these waken 
in us no response, then our King is silent. For 
Love would rather hold its peace than extort the 
response which the vision alone of its suffering 
and sacrifice should quickly prompt. Further- 
more, surrender is 



WHATr 21 

III. the: VOLIfNTARY OFFERING OF OURSSl^VKS. / 

It is ourselves that God wants. No gift oi 
money, time, service or talents will meet the 
yearning of His heart for ourselves. For God is 
love, and Love would above all things have the 
heart. Thus surrender is a transaction betv/een 
Redeemer and redeemed, and whatsoever falls 
short of the sacred gift of a yielded heart falls 
short of all. There is that in the heart of the 
poorest and most degraded which slirinks from 
money when it needs love. How much more so 
with the Lover of our souls. Silver and gold, 
time and talents, miinistry and service, are ac- 
ceptable to God as an accompaninienf of sur- 
render, but never as an evasion of it. There are 
those vvho vvill give wealth, time and eiiort, but 
Vv'ho in their secret hearts have never yet yielded 
themselves to God. When in the silence and 
secrecy of their own communion with Gjd, this 
issue rises before them they tremble and grow 
pale, and shrink back from this defmite trans- 
action with God. And yet if God is to be all to 
us, we must yield all to Him. Never can that 
confidential relationship betw^een the Redeemer 
and His redeemed, which is the highest blessed- 
ness of the believer's life, be established until 
we give ourselves to Him who gave Himself 
for us. Without this yielding of ourselves to 
Him we have not, in a profound sense of the 
word, received Him as Lord, even though we 
know Him as Savior. Have v/e ever pondered 
this distinction? Paul calls Him ''Jesus Christ 



22 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

our Lord." ''J^sus" we know : ''They shall call 
His name Jesus, for He shall save His people 
from their sins." "Jesus — Savior ;" how much the 
word means ! "He has saved us from the guilt 
of sin; He is saving us from the power of. sin; 
He will save us from the presence of sin." We 
know the peace of remitted sin: we know the 
victory over defeated sin: vvx shall some day 
know the glory of vanished sin. As Savior we 
know whom we believe, and, know that He is able 
to save unto the uttermost all them that draw 
near to God through Him. As Savior He never 
fails in tim.e of need, has never lost a battle for 
the weakest soul who puts his trust in Him. 
How^ever fierce the temptation to those who trust 
Him, He will always "with the temptation make 
a way of escape." Verily we rejoice in Him 
first of all as Jesus ! So also do we know Him 
as Christ — the Anointed One. For He has 
anointed us with His ov/n Holy Spirit. And the 
anointing which we have received of Him 
abideth, and we need not that any man teach us. 
That Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of Jesus, the 
Spirit of God, dwells within us. He comforts : He 
guides : He gives love, joy and peace : He purifies : 
He reveals the things of Christ: He makes us 
like Christ: He will unveil in us the very glory 
of Christ. But this Son of God whom we con- 
fess as our Savior, and joy in as our Anointer, 
do we also receive as our Lord (for Lord means 
Master), owner and proprietor of ourselves 
absolutely and forever, by right of redemption? 



WHAT? 23 

Beloved, is Jesus Christ our Lord_, in the fullest 
sweep of the term? Have v^e gladly yielded to 
Him the Mastership of ourselves, our lives, our 
all? Or, have we accepted the privileges of 
redemption, in salvation and anointing, without 
acknowledging the claim of redemption, namely, 
Mastership — Lordship? Is He Master of our- 
selves, our gold and silver, our affections, 
thoughts, time, talents? How can any one in 
this respect call Jesus Lord, save by the Spirit? 
Beloved, does that Spirit which witnesses to you 
of remission of sins, and sealing of the Spirit, 
also bear witness with exultant joy to the ac- 
knowdedged ownership, the absolute, undisputed 
Mastership of Jesus Christ as Lord of your life ? 
**Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the 
things which I say?" When Mary said ''they 
have taken away my Lord": when Thomas at 
the vision of His wounds cried out ''My Lord !" : 
when in the gray dawn by the sea the disciples 
w^hispered "It is the Lord" ; that word Lord was 
fraught with a significance which does not seem 
to be wrought into the fabric of our lives as it 
was in theirs. He was "the Master" to them 
by their own glad, grateful, voluntary choice. 
They crowned Him Lord of all, not merely in 
a flight of song, or a burst of sentiment, or in a 
moment of transient emotion. The master- 
passion of their lives was to be wholly for Him 
who had given up all for them. They were in 
blood earnest in their dedication to Him. The 



24 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

scene in Acts 2: 44, 45, enigma as it is to an 
undedicated life, glows with the splendor of the 
very presence of Him who was so literally 
crow^ned as Lord of all, that in that remarkable 
multitude "neither said any of them that aught 
of the things which he possessed was his ozvn" ! 
Beloved, is Jesiis Christ, not only your Savior, 
your Christ, but also your Lord ? 

IV. The: voi^untary offering of ourselves 

UNTO GOD. 



Not to a caUing, a field, an occupation, x>r a 
principle, but to God. We do well to note this. 
For with many the thought of the yielded life is 
always linked v/ith the mission field, the Gospel 
ministry, or some other special form of service. 
Immediately that the claim of Christ upon the 
life is pressed home there comes up the test, "Can 
I preach the Gospel, or can I go to China, or 
India, or xA.fnca?" Now God does not call us 
to surrender to a field or a calling, but to yield 
ourselves in blank to Him. The real issue is not 
will I go to Africa, but do I trust God enough to 
place my life in His hands without regard to the 
particular place or form of service in which He 
may desire it. Paul says of the Macedonians 
that "They Urst gave their own selves unto the 
Lord, and then unto us by the will of God." (2 : 
Cor. 8: 5.) That is, having settled in their own 
minds that they could "trust the Man vv^ho had 
died for them" and that His will was the best 
thing in the universe for them, they first gave 



WHAT? 25 

themselves without reserve to Him. Thus yield- 
ing to God, the Holy Ghost, filling them with 
Plimself, filled them with a glad and willing 
obedience to the particular acts of service or sacri- 
fice which God, in His will, had for them. ''First, 
. . . unto God; then unto us by the will of 
God." This is the divine order. The real battle 
is fought over this. ''First, . . . tmto God/" 
The real victory is to trust His will without 
regard to zvhat His will may be or where His 
will may lead: to yield ourselves to God, rather 
than to struggle to go to the foreign mission 
field against an unyielding will. When the 
struggle to give ourselves wholly unto God is 
settled then the battle is won. For the Holy 
Spirit fills the wholly yielded life with such a glad 
spirit of obedience as to make the after-doing of 
God's special will for us the joy and delight of 
our life. The true missionary, once yielded to 
God, goes to his field not vvdth doubt and re- 
luctance, but with unspeakable gladness, born of 
a free-will service to the God whose he is and 
Avhom he serves. Wherefore when such tests as 
above enter into the arena of our struggle to 
yield to God, let us meet them by saying, *Xord, 
I give myself wholly to Thee, to do all Thy will, 
and if this be Thine after-will for me, Thou wilt 
give me grace to do it with joy when that time 
comes." The grace to do some special act of 
God's will comes abundantly to him who has 
yielded himself to do all of that will. And this 



26 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

brings us easily and naturally to the last thought 
in the definition of surrender, that it is : 

V. THS VOI.UNTARY OFFERING OF 0URSEI.VFS UNTO 
GOD TO DO HIS WILE INSTEAD OF OUR OWN. 

This is the supreme aim"" and purpose of the 
yielded life. The v/ill of the flesh and the will of 
God are in discord. Fallen man is in rebellion 
against the perfect will of God. The redemption 
of Jesus Christ would bring him back into perfect 
accord with that will, and looks forward to the 
day when that will shall be done as perfectly in a 
redeemed earth as now in heaven. Wherefore 
to do the will of God, and no longer do the will 
of the flesh, is the only attitude the child of God, 
who is to joy in that will through all eternity, 
can possibly take in the fleeting years of his 
pilgrimage on earth. Surrender is simply the 
voluntary act which places him now in that atti- 
tude. Such surrender is not an act of merit, or 
self-righteousness, by which the yielded life wins 
or deserves more from God than the unyielded 
one. But that surrender is predicated upon the 
manifested fact that the God of all grace, eager 
to carry out His perfect will in the life of His 
every child, can do so only as that life is yielded 
to Him, His all-wise dealings in it, and His 
glorious purposes for it. 



"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the 
mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a 
living sacrifice." — Romans 12: i. 

''The Lord hath need of him." — Luke 19: 34. 

WHY should we recognize Christ's right: 
why hear His call : why answer His ^ 
beseeching for the yielding of our lives ? 
Because surrender is the answer to His love: 
the supply of His need. 

I. IT IS the: answe:r to his love. 
In a little chapel in a European village hangs 
a picture of the Christ. The artist who painted 
it was a child of God redeemed by the blood of 
Christ from a life of sin and folly. So filled 
with love for his dying Savior was his rejoicing 
soul that when he came to paint, that soul was 
flooded with tenderest love, and into every linea- 
ment, pose and expression of the Divine Man he 
painted love, love, howt as few had done before, 
or have done since. Underneath the picture of 
the Sufferer he had written the lines : 

"All this I did for thee, 
What hast thou done for Me?" 



28 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

One summer day there strolled into the Httle 
church a young nobleman. Loitering along the 
aisle his attention was arrested by the painting, 
into which the Spirit of God had breathed His 
own love through the fashioning hands of the 
artist. As he saw the love depicted in every 
lineam.ent of that divine face; as he saw the 
pierced hands, and bleeding brow, the wounded 
side ; as he slowly scanned the couplet 
"All this I did for thee, 
What hast thou done for Me?" 

a new revelation of the claim of Jesus Christ upon 
every life upon which' His grace had been out- 
poured flashed upon him. Hour after hour passed 
as he sat intently gazing upon the face of the 
Suffering One. As the day waxed apace, and, 
the lingering rays of sunlight shot aslant aisle and 
pew, they fell upon the bowed form of Zinzen- 
dorf, weeping and sobbing out his devotion to 
the Christ whose love had not only saved his 
soul, but conquered his heart. Out from that 
little church he v/ent forth to do a mighty life 
Avork, which has circled the earth with the mis- 
sions of that Moravian people, who seem to have 
realized and incarnated the love of Christ for a 
lost world, as no other denomination of God's 
Church militant has yet done. 

Believer, have yoii had this vision of the suffer- 
ing Christ, not only as Savior, but as the wooer 
and the winner of your own heart's best love ? Has 
His passion for you kindled in your heart a re- 
sponsive, burning love for Him? Has His love 
unto death not only brought you glad salvation, 



WHY? 29 

but stirred you to willing surrender? Accepting 
His redemption do you also joyously acknowl- 
edge His ownership? Is He a crowned King 
in your life, as well as a Lamb bleeding for your 
life? Do you recognize the claims of His love, 
as well as the privilege of it? Or, exulting in 
its sacrifice are you yet mute to its appeals ? 

You have been some time in a great revival 
meeting when every influence seemed to be 
beseeching men to be saved. The preacher has 
poured forth his message with eager, burning 
earnestness direct to the hearts of the multitude 
before him. The prayers that have gone up 
have been but sobbing pleadings that lost men 
mrlght yield to God. The songs that have floated 
out over the vast congregation have stirred and 
thrilled your inmost soul with the intensity of 
their entreaty. And then, as under it all, men 
and v/omen sat unyielding, unmoved, undeciding, 
you have cried out in amazement that souls could 
resist unto the end such m.ighty influences as were 
at w^ork before your eyes, and were so 
profoundly felt in your own soul. But child 
of God, "art thou not inexcusable, whosoever 
thou art that judgest, for wherein thou judgest 
another thou condemnest thyself?" Have the 
men and women who sit stolid and apparently un- 
moved known the mercies of God as you know 
them ? Have they been snatched from a horrible, 
impending doom by a dying Savior as you have ? 
Is heaven, with all its bliss and glory, open be- 
fore them^, and assured to them as it is to you? 



30 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

Have their souls, reddened with sin, been washed 
white Hke snow as yours has? Have they felt 
the touch of Christ's healing hand, heard the 
tender tones of His divine forgiveness, exulted 
in the unspeakable peace of His salvation, had 
the tear-blinded vision of His agony and death- 
less love that you have? Ah, beloved, if the re- 
fusal of a sinner to give up his sins under the 
pleadings of the Spirit is a solemn responsibility, 
is not the refusal of a believer to give up his life, 
after he has experienced all the mercies of God, 
also a sad and solemn thing to the heart of that 
God? If the sinner is culpable in steadfastly re- 
sisting the Christ who wants to save him, are 
not we much more so in resisting the Christ who 
has saved us, and now wants to use us for His 
glory and the salvation of others ? And how He 
pleads for the yielded lives of His children! 
Hear Him as through His servant Paul He voices 
His tender entreaty to us : "I bkseech you 
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that 
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice." What 
a scene is here ! Not man, not Paul : but Jesus 
Christ, through man, beseeching His children for 
the lives He so much needs for His service. Pic- 
ture Him entering this room to-night. As w^e sit 
with hushed, expectant hearts the door opens and 
He enters ! Down the aisle comes that form, once 
a familiar sight by the shores of Galilee, in the 
streets of Jerusalem, and in the thronging feasts 
of the people. Passing quietly to the teacher's 
place He turns, and we look upon the face of 



WHY? 31 

Jesus! There is the same smile that gladdened 
the hearts of His own two thousand years ago; 
the same familiar voice that thrilled their inmost 
being as it spoke the ^vords of life and peace ; the 
same gaze that bespeaks Him at once the man of 
sorrows and of tender, compassionate, quenchless 
love. How still our hearts grow ! How £lled the 
room seems with His Presence ! How breathless 
we sit : once self-absorbed, now Christ-absorbed ! 
And now, as the instinct of prayer steals into our 
remorseful hearts, we would beseech His for- 
giveness for our coldness which now seems to us 
an awful shame. We would beseech His fore- 
bearance with our selfishness which now fills us 
with astonishment and grief unutterable. We 
would beseech His forgetfulness of our lack of 
communion, which now in His presence seems 
almost unforgivable. We would beseech His 
compassionate grace for our failure to tell the 
heathen world of His love, for now it seems red- 
handed crime. But as our heart is flooded with 
the sense of our unworth, worldliness, and faith- 
lessness, and our lips begin to move and our knees 
to bend in petition, behold a marvel ! Do our 
eyes deceive us? He the King, the Lord, the 
Creator begins to beseech us the subjects, the 
servants, the created ! Stretching forth His 
scarred hands, touching His blood-stained brow, 
pointing to His pierced side — all tokens of the 
mercies of God, He speaks. ''Children of God, / 
beseech you! By the need of dying men: by the 
the shortness of the time: by the follies of the 



32 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

world : by the wasted years of your life : by the 
secret longings of your own heart : by My blood 
shed for you : by My death instead of yours : by 
My resurrection, which is life for you: by My 
glory prepared for you : and by My Kingship to 
be shared by you — I beseech you by the mercies 
of God that ye present your bodies a living sac- 
rifice, holy, acceptable unto God." 

Alas, indeed, for those who will not accept Him 
as Savior. But alas, too, for those who, crim- 
soned v^ith the blood of His redemption, shel- 
tered from the sin-smiting hand of God by His 
quivering body, thrilling with exultant life from 
His glorious resurrection, still will not yield to 
Him as Lord of their lives. How can our eyes 
be blind to the vision of His love, our ears be deaf 
to the mute pathos of its appeal, our hearts fail 
to fill, and throb, and well-nigh burst with long- 
ing to requite in som.e measure by surrender, sac- 
rifice, and suffering even unto death, His match- 
less love for us? Astounding to ourselves will 
be the spectacle of our own unyielded lives when 
in the great day of reward we stand in the pres- 
ence of the Prince of Sufferers ! The very glory 
that enrobes us, as it attests His grace, will be the 
mightiest witness against our failure of respon- 
siveness to it. Being risen with Him, being 
joined vv^th Him in fellowship of glory and king- 
ship, we shall also be associated with Him in fel- 
lowship of judgment. With Him we shall judge 
ourselves ! Gazing back with His vision upon 
our unyielded Hfe we shall see it then as He sees 



WHY? 33 

it, and join in His solemn judgment upon its 
wasted opportunities. Tremendous thought! 
"But if we judged ourselves we would not be 
judged." Wherefore, let us judge now this ques- 
tion of the unyielded life as in the light of etern- 
ity we shall then judge it. And so shall we here 
see its ingratitude, its awful waste, its utter fail- 
ure to carry out His perfect purpose. And so 
seeing, and so touched by the vision of His 
matchless love we shall, before "the night 
cometh," lay it at the feet of "Him that loved us, 
and washed us from our sins in His own blood, 
and hath made us kings and priests unto God 
and His Father." 

II. IT IS THi: SUPPIvY O^ HIS NEED. 

When the Master sent His disciples to bring 
the colt upon which He would make His entry 
into Jerusalem, the owners of the colt said, "Why 
loose ye the colt?" And they said, "The Lord 
hath need of him." The Lord of heaven and 
earth, He who could say, "The cattle on a thou- 
sand hills are mine," in infinite grace and hu- 
mility of spirit deigned to say that He who had 
created all things by the word of His power 
needed this humblest beast of burden. Even so 
does He need the life of each man and woman 
who has been born into His heavenly kingdom. 
Every word in this simple sentence is full of 
meaning. 

The Lord hath need of thee, saved one. Trade, 
with all its rush, and fever, and wear, and waste, 
lays its hands upon the Christian and says curtly : 



34 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

'7 need you to plan, think, toil, accumulate, and 
die in my service." Society, too, asserts its claim, 
and says : "I need you with your wit, beauty, talents 
and accomplishments to shine in the brilliant cir- 
cles of fashion, and will give you pleasure with- 
out limit if you will yield to me." Professional 
life lays its hand on him and says : *7 need you 
to adorn your chosen calling, and will gratify 
your highest ambitions if you will come." But 
there comes a voice, softly floating down from 
twenty vanished centuries, a voice which whis- 
pers to every redeemed child of God in the hour 
when wealth, and pleasure, and ambition have 
failed to satisfy his secret longings; a voice 
which is true to-day as of old : ''The; Lord hath 
need of thee." Suppose you were absent from 
home, engrossed in business, pleasure, or profes- 
sional activities, and a swift messenger came to 
you with the tidings that you wife was in deadly 
peril and needed you forthwith. None of the 
other varied interests that clamored for your tar- 
rying could hold you by their outcry of need. 
That swift-handed artist, your own heart, would 
quickly paint a picture of the wifely love of her 
who was now in jeopardy, and the whispered 
message, "She whom thou lovest is sick," would 
send you flying to her bedside. Even so, amid all 
the conflicting interests that lay claim to your 
life, you cannot escape this great truth that the 
Lord whom you love needs you. He who loves 
you as no being in the universe loves: He who 
left the glory of heaven; He who endured the 



WHY? 35 

wrath of the Father against sin: He who bled 
between earth and heaven, all for you : He, your 
risen Lord, sends you this message to-day: ''The 
Lord hath need of thee." 

How precious, then, is this thought that the 
Lord really ne:i:ds us! The other phase of this 
truth we all know. That we need Him is beyond 
question. Not only do we sing it, but daily, hour- 
ly, do we profoundly realize it: "I need Thee 
every hour." For light, help, peace, victory, 
power, yea for all things we need Him every 
moment of our existence. But that He needs 
us — how blessed ! And yet it is true. "I am the 
vine : ye are the branches" is the message which 
comes to us from His own lips. But have we 
caught all of its meaning? Think a moment 
upon the symmetry of this truth. Surely the 
branches need the vine. It is the source of their 
life. From it those branches, moment by mo- 
ment, draw the tiny streams of life-giving sap 
that feed and build up their fabric of leaf, fibre 
and fruit. Apart from it they could do nothing. 
Severed from it they starve, shrivel, and perish. 
But is it not also true that the vine needs the 
branches? For the vine bears its fruit through 
the branches. It cannot get along without 
branches. Not a single cluster of grapes does 
it grow upon its own main stem, but always upon 
some tiny branch off-shooting from it. "I have 
chosen you that ye should go and bear fruit, and 
that your fruit should abide." Christ is the liv- 
ing Vine. He is the source of our supply. But 



36 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

He bears His fruit through us. He needs us 
for fruit-bearing as surely as we need Him for 
life. There is a profound sense in which He can- 
not get along without us. Sometimes a great 
vine grows up behind a castle wall. No eye from 
without sees its hidden stem, strong, sturdy, and 
grounded in the rich garden soil. But it makes 
itself known through thousands of branches 
which cover the wall with a profusion of foliage, 
blossom, and luscious purple fruitage, delighting 
the eye of every passer-by. The vine is the 
source of the branches' life : the branches are the 
expression of the vine's life. So Christ is the 
living Vine. He is hid behind the veil that sep- 
arates the eternal from the mortal, and our life 
is ''hid with Him in God." Men do not see Him : 
"the world seeth Me not." While He is the head 
in heaven we are the members on the earth. 
Therefore the hidden Vine must make Himself 
known through His countless fruit-bearing 
branches. He stands no more in street, and field, 
and synagogue, as of old, to preach the glad Gos- 
pel, but He would do it through us. He does not 
minister to the sick and afflicted with physical 
hands, but He needs us to do it. He does not 
warn the impenitent, comfort the sorrowing, 
cheer the fallen by w^ord of lip to-day, but He 
would fain minister thus through us. His mem- 
bers and branches. 

Again, the Lord hath need of thhe;. Observe, 
what a humble instrument it was that Christ de- 
clared He needed. For that triumphal entry into 



WHYf 37 

the city He might have chosen splendid chariot 
and mettled chargers, for He who created all was 
worthy of earth's richest and choicest. But He 
chose the humblest, lowliest, most insignificant 
beast of burden to be found, and said, "The Lord 
hath need of him/' Mark, He did not simply 
use the colt for lack of something better, but He 
chose it, and that too, in fulfillment of Scrip- 
ture. Just so, "God hath chosen the foolish 
things .... and God hath chosen the 
weak things .... and base things of the 
world, and things which are despised hath God 
chosen'' (I. Cor. 1:26, etc.). Those who are 
nothing are God's choice ! And He chooses the 
wise and noble only when they are willing to be 
as nothing. He can do more with consecrated 
nothingness than self-sufficient pride and lofti- 
ness. And so the message comes, to-day : — "You 
who are servants with but one talent: who feel 
that all others are fitted for God's service except 
you: who shrink w^ith fear and trembling from 
every proffered opportunity: you who are the 
humblest, the weakest, the most obscure, 'The 
Lord hath need of thee/ You are really God's 
chosen ones, if you will but place yourselves in 
His hands in this same spirit of nothingness 
which He alone can use to keep the flesh from 
'glorying in His presence.' '^ Let us appropriate 
this blessed truth for our very own, and put our- 
selves in the hands of Him who with a worm can 
thresh the mountains. And then as we walk the 
streets, as we toil at our business, as we shut our- 



38 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

selves into the chamber of prayer, as we bow over 
His Word, as we work on in the humble sphere 
of life where He has placed us, it will be very 
sweet to hourly whisper to ourselves, "The Lord 
hath need of me, the Lord of heaven and earth 
needeth me;!" Gladly, therefore, will we yield 
our lives to Him who in infinite grace tells us 
that He needs us, and condescends to make us 
co-workers with Himself through time and 
through eternity. 





"Be ye steadfast, unmoveahle." — I. Corinthians 

15: 58. 

"No man having put his hand to the plough 
and looking hack is fit for the kingdom of God." 
— Luke 9 : 62. 

''Be not afraid; only believe/' — Mark 5 :^6. 

BE definite. There is a distinct shore Hne 
between land and sea. There is a clear- 
cut horizon line between sky and moun- 
tain peak. Let the surrender which separates the 
old life of self-seeking from the new life of self-^ 
renunciation be specific and definite. The ap- 
proach to it may have been by a gradual march 
of events, years and gracious providences. But 
when the call is clearly seen, the issue met, and 
the battle fought, let the decision be definite. 
Either yield, or assume the solemn responsibility 
of refusal. Some toy and dally with seen truth, 
deceiving themselves with the thought that the 
passive drift of indecision is not rejection. But 
it is. And the seared and stultified conscience 
begotten from such a habit works irreparable 



40 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

havoc and ruin. Every crisis of decision must 
be met, and we meet it in the negative when we 
neglect to meet it at all. Therefore settle the 
question as becomes an immortal soul redeemed 
by the Lord Jesus Christ, and now brought face 
to face with His consequent claim. Be deliberate 
indeed. Then be definite. It is a good thing to 
record the fact and date of so blessed a transac- 
tion with your Lord. A glance at such "v^ll do 
much to steady you in after times of stress and 
trial. 

II. BE^ TRUSTFUL. 

When you commit your case into the hands of 
a physician you are fair enough to let him have 
his own way. Be at least equally fair with God. 
Be patient while He works in you. You cannot 
leap at one bound into the full man in Christ 
Jesus. You cannot dethrone self at one blow. 
You are not only to renounce self but also to per- 
fect that renunciation by living daily the life of 
self-renunciation. (Luke 9:23.) You will not, 
at the beginning, see all the meaning of sur- 
render. You would not be able to bear it then. 
You will not at first have a complete revelation 
of the self-life. It would break your heart to 
see yourself all at once ! You would be filled 
with despair. You will not come into the full 
light of His Word — the full knowledge of His 
will — in a moment, a month, a year. True, He 
has promised to "guide you into all truth," but 
not all at once. Wherefore be trustful, be pa- 



HOW? 41 

tient. He knows you as you will never know 
yourself. There is much in you that requires the 
time element in your purification and preparation, 
'*He himself knew what He would do." Where- 
fore trust Him. It will all come right in His own 
lime and way. 

III. be; comprkhensive. 

Make no reservation with God. Let the act of 
surrender sweep in every interest, plan, power, 
and possession of your being. Let one foot of 
the compass be pivoted at the very centre — the 
heart and zvill — and let the other describe a circle 
to its most distant horizon, omitting nothing from 
its encircling bounds. As there is no detail of 
our lives beneath the notice of a loving God, there 
should be none too trivial to yield to Him. Of 
course all God asks is sincere-heartedness, not 
omniscience. He does not expect us to see at a 
flash all the details which are comprehended in 
the act of consecration. The God of love whose 
worship included a sacrifice for sins of ignorance 
bears very gently with such ignorance in His 
children. All he asks is that we yield honestly 
all we do see, and yield trustfully all we do not 
see but which He may in days to come show us 
to be comprehended in our act. Let us be sin- 
cerely minded to be wholly His, "and if in any- 
thing ye are otherwise minded even this will God 
reveal unto you." So if our hearts are honest in 
purpose and act, let us not come into the bondage 
of fearing that we have not compassed everything 



42 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

in our act of surrender and that therefore God 
accepts it not. This is grave error. Our God is 
not unreasonable and arbitrary, but tender, lov- 
ing, compassionate. The consecration of our life, 
with an honest heart, up to our best light and 
understanding of consecration, is perfectly satis- 
factory and acceptable to Him. 

But let us beware of anything knowingly un- 
yielded to Him: of any self-engrafted exception 
in our act of renunciation: of any point where 
the will remains consciously unsubmitted to God. 
When we whisper within ourselves "I can say yes 
to God, I can submit to His will, I can trust His 
love in all except this one thing," we m.ay be 
assured that this one thing will work spiritual 
disaster in our lives. For a child to refuse to 
obey a mother's direction to pick up from the 
floor some object which it has petulantly hurled 
there, may seem a trivial thing. But the spirit 
of disobedience behind that act is a most mo- 
mentous thing, for it breaks communion be- 
tween parent and child and will work irreparable 
injury to its character in after life. Even so the 
thing we knov/ingly reserve from our dedication 
to God may seem trivial to us. But the failure 
of trust or obedience involved therein is fatal to 
that relation of fullest confidence toward God 
which is absolutely necessary to His fullest mani- 
festation in our spiritual life. It takes but a 
trifling barrier to keep out the sunshine, but the 
keeping out of that sunshine is far from being a 
trifle. So the unyielded thing that bars God's 



HOW? 43 

fullness may seem nothing to us, but the full- 
ness which is thus missed is everything to the 
soul that longs for the unveiled shining of His 
face. 

One wild, stormy night, as the dwellers in a 
little cliff town on the New England coast 
watched the tall lighthouse through the thick 
gloom, a strange thing happened. The warning 
bells rang out in wild clangor, and the light was 
seen to suddenly surge forward, hang for an in- 
stant suspended over the sea, and then disappear 
in its swift arc-flight into the seething, hissing 
waters below, carrying to swift death the lonely 
occupants. The morning light revealed the strik- 
ing secret of the midnight catastrophe. The 
dwellers in the lighthouse had sometime before 
fastened a stout cable from the top of the beacon 
to the rocks below, for the hoisting of provisions 
and supplies. When the tide and storm arose that 
night the giant billows beat with weighty blows 
upon the great hawser until, by degrees, the tall 
iron supports were strained, and the overbal- 
anced lighthouse crashed to swift ruin. A single 
line had done the deadly work ! A single reser- 
vation or default in our surrender to God may 
work like havoc. If we are saved it cannot wreck 
our soul. But it may so bar out God's purpose 
of fullness in and through us that our ship of life, 
though unwrecked, may yet sail into the harbor 
of eternity an empty, pauper craft instead of a 
richly freighted galleon, loaded to the water's 
verge with all the fullness of God. 



44 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

IV. B^ FINAL. 

In all true consecration the deed of transfer is 
irrevocable. Let it be done once and forever, for 
all time and all eternity. Let it be so absolute 
and unconditional that there shall never be any 
need of renewing it, because there has never,/-^ 
been any thought of revoking it. Sometimes a 
thoughtless nurse will tease a child by offering 
it some trifle, then drawing it back out of reach 
as the little one essays to take it. She may re- 
peat this process again and again until the child 
is wholly uncertain as to whether the object is 
to be given or not. Some efforts at surrender 
seem equally insincere and futile. The life is ap- 
parently offered to God, but as soon as He would 
lay His hand upon it to possess it we nervously 
draw it back, only to repeat again the process of 
offer and withdrawal. Whoso gives his life to 
God should give it never expecting to retake it. 
So not only all re-taking but all re-giving raises 
a suspicion of insincerity in the giver. What 
man who has made an honest sale or gift could 
re-sell or re-give without impeaching his own sin- 
cerity? Hence when the life has been really 
given to God there is no such thing as a re-con- 
secration. Neither should a truly surrendered 
child of God be weekly or monthly re-conse- 
crating himself to God. Every time he does so 
he casts a doubt upon the genuineness of the 
transaction by which he gave himself to God 
once and forever. What we may do, and should 
do, is, not only weekly or monthly, but daily and 



HOW? 45 

hourly to say to ourselves, not, "Lord, I give my- 
self to Thee again," but, "Lord, I am thine, now 
and forever ; let me never doubt it or be unmind- 
ful of it." There is a beautiful story of Bengel, 
the famous commentator. Toiling all day long- 
over the Book of books he was watched by one 
of his students to see how faithful he would be 
to his evening devotions amid his weariness. As 
the clock struck the midnight hour the curious 
watcher saw the saintly man close the book and 
betake himself to rest with the simple words, 
"Lord, Thou knowest that we are on the same 
old terms !" Even so as servants of God may we, 
and should we, day by day look up into the face 
of our Master and say, "Lord, thou knowest that 
we are on the same old terms; that I am Thine 
and Thou art mine, forever." 

V. BK STEADFAST. 

Look to it that your dearest friends shake not 
that steadfastness. Many a soul stands strong 
and steady against the adversary's grosser and 
more flagrant assaults upon his determination to be 
wholly the Lord's. But the heart grows sick, and 
the soul faint, when, with new steps made in the 
new light of a fuller obedience, there falls upon 
the pathway the dark shadow of dissent and 
possible reproach from those whose loving ap- 
proval and sympathy are so dear to him. Subtle 
and ensnaring is the temptation at this point, 
and many fall under its deadly onslaught. The 
wife who would give up all else for the Lord, 



46 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

shrinks with absolute terror from the thought of 
the possible barrier which her closer walk with 
Him may raise between her and a worldly hus- 
band. The husband who would sacrifice all for 
Christ meets the limit of that all when he faces 
the thought that the wife of his love will not 
stand with him in the peculiar place of separa- 
tion. The test seems too hard and cruel. That 
"a. man's foes should be they of his own house- 
hold" is too much for flesh and blood. And so 
the earthly tie becomes the limitation of a loyalty 
to Christ which should be limitless. Yet all this 
is of the evil one. Such is the stamp which 
Christ puts upon it when He says to His own 
loved disciple, seeking to allure Him from His 
walk with God, ''Get thee behind me, Satan." 

The tempter is simply using the tenderest ties 
of our nature to draw us away from God. And 
mark, that the compromise we there make in- 
variably fails of its object. The Christian wife 
who yields to the play, the dance, or the card 
table, in the hope of winning or preserving in- 
fluence over a loved husband, is taking the surest 
plan to destroy it. The only hope she has of 
lifting him to a closer walk with God is to show 
him the worth and preciousness of such to her 
own soul, and thus fill him with desire for a like 
richer life in Christ. But the supreme thing 
which convicts him of the preciousness of such a 
life is to see that it is so dear to her that she 
will not even sacrifice it upon the altar of her 
own love for him. Wherefore that life is at once 



EOWf 47 

cheapened and dishonored in his sight, when it 
is so sacrificed or compromised. That which is 
cast away so Hghtly must be, he argues, of so 
little worth that he will not trouble himself to 
seek it. The jewel in her spiritual crown which 
had seemed a blazing diamond is, after all, only 
paste. Respect is gone, and influence vanishes 
with it. The very compromise made to gain in- 
fluence has really annihilated it. There are hearts 
that have found this true, to their own unspeak- 
able sorrow. In numberless cases this, our very 
steadfast loyalty to God, is His chosen plan to 
bring a loved one to Christ or to a deeper life 
in Him. 

What grief then to know some day that our 
faithlessness has been used by the enemy to 
wreck or mar a life we love. We know a wife 
who is to-day persistently rejecting Jesus Christ 
because she would rather be lost with her hus- 
band than saved without him. A wifely sacrifice 
this seems to her, to lose her soul with his. But 
what awful agony to wake up in perdition and 
realize that if she had been obedient to God he 
would have followed! There are many such 
wives and husbands who, bearing aloft the stand- 
ard of a separated life in the face of every other 
foe, have let it go into the dust before this one, 
to their own secret shame and confusion. He 
that cherisheth not his own beloved ones is worse 
than a brute. But "He that loveth father or 
mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.'* 
Let us be true to God at any cost, then we need 



48 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

not fear results, for God will care for all the con- 
sequences of obedience. But no soul can esti- 
mate the endless train of ruin that will follow 
disobedience to His known will, however lofty 
may be the pretext that prompts us to it. You 
who gently and lovingly, yet with rock-bound 
steadfastness, stand true to God in all things, are 
doing the one thing which can possibly lift a 
loved one up to your own vision of spiritual life 
and walk. Be not afraid. Be patient and loving 
in it all, and the victory which is begotten of 
prayer and obedience to God, though it may be 
long in coming, will, when it comes, be all the 
more glorious and complete. 

VI. Bt HOPElPUIv. 

A young man in the prime of life lay dying of 
consumption. The years of his strong, young 
life had been passed outside of Christ until within 
a short time preceding his last illness, when, won 
at last by the long-suffering grace of God, he 
gave his heart to Christ. A childlike trust in 
Christ, of singular beauty and restfulness in one 
so young in the faith, characterized his few re- 
maining days. Leaving his room one day a 
friend suggested to him the hope that if it were 
God's will He might raise him up again to health 
and strength. His face lit up, and turning to the 
speaker, with countenance aglow with the very 
joy of the thought, he said, "Yes, brother, it 
would he heautifid to live nowf After the years 
away from his Lord; after the sweet realization 



EOWr 49 

of His tender love in redeeming his soul from 
death, the thought of living for Christ instead of 
for self, clothed life with a beauty and glory 
which filled the heart of the dying boy with wist- 
ful longing that could now know no fruition 
here. 

Ah, beloved, after the years of disappointment, 
of baffled plans, of self-seeking, of following the 
Lord afar off, of bitter rebellion against His 
chastening hand, we reach at last the end of 
self, and yield to our Lord and Master the life 
for which He has been tenderly pleading all these 
years. And then with what glad assent do our 
hearts, echoing the words of the dying boy, cry 
out in sheer joy : "It is beautiful to live now !" 
Oh, soul, troubled, dismayed, darkened, dazed, 
your life has been a jar, and jangle, and discord, 
solely because it has been out of the centre, and 
that centre — Christ. But now that the stubborn 
will is yielded and His blessed w^ill sought and 
found to be so ''good, and acceptable, and per- 
fect:" now that you know the peace of God as 
well as peace with God: now that you have 
found the life plan that He has, from all etern- 
ity, had for you, and are joyously obeying His 
word to Daniel, ''Stand in thy lot until the end :" 
now that "to live is Christ'' and "to die is gain:" 
all this and unspeakably more will make it 
"beautiful to live now !" Wherefore be hopeful. 
Though your progress toward Christ-likeness 
seems slow: though appalled at the growing 
revelation of your own fleshliness: though the 



50 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

}aelded life means more than you ever dreamed 
before : though the *'and now Httle children abide 
in Him," which is the mountain height of your 
Christian attainment here, seems each day to rise 
higher and higher above your out-reaching soul, 
yet — be hopeful. God is working. He is guid- 
ing, shaping, transforming. He is having His 
way with you as never before. Look back over 
the days, the weeks, the months since you gave 
all to Him and rejoice at the real and blessed 
growth of His life in you. Not yet where you 
want to be? Nay nor where He desires you to 
be, and will bring you to be. But He is faithful. 
Do you be hopeful, and He will bring you into 
the place, the power, and the peace foreordained 
in Christ for you from all eternity. 




THEN. 63 

my wisdom, my life, my light. He assures me 
that the Spirit dwelling within m.e has taken 
charge of me. The Spirit will guide : the Spirit 
will teach: the Spirit will purify. He will re- 
veal the Christ : He will fit me for service : He 
will speak through me : He will work the works 
of God through me. He will at all times do all 
things which my life needs for its perfect growth 
in Christ. In the old life I schemed, and planned, 
and fretted concerning my daily round of duty 
and service. In the new life I am to leave all to 
Him. In the old life I constantly trusted my 
strength, my judgment, my wisdom. In the new 
I am to trust His, and His alone. He is now 
wholly in charge. The reins are in His grasp. 
He is the teacher, I am the scholar; He the 
worker, I only the instrument; He the potter, I 
the clay. The Spirit is therefore now to have 
possession and control of me in a sense and 
measure unknown before I renounced proprietor- 
ship. I am now to learn the greatest lesson in 
the school of faith, the lesson of constant distrust 
of self, and constant looking unto Jesus. I am 
to be self-dependent in nothing, Christ-depend- 
ent in all things. Not only am I justified by 
faith, but I now also realize that "the just shall 
I.IVE by faith." Jesus Christ says, "I Am the 
Li^E.^' Therefore I am to be constantly looking 
to Him; I am to be continually drawing upon 
Him. I am to be ever living by faith in 
Him. The justified man says, "I trusted, and re- 
ceived Thee as life ;" the surrendered man, "I am 



64 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

trusting, and constantly drawing upon Thy life." 
His present tense life is to be met by my present 
tense faith. The correlative of His "I am the 
Life" is my 'Xord, I am living by faith in Thee." 
The very life which floods heaven is dependent 
life, "a river of water of life proceeding out of 
the throne of God and of the Lamb." Rev. 22:1. 
If the Son of God lived thus, and the redeemed 
in heaven shall live thus, how much more should 
I, His weak, earthly child, so live. It will take 
line upon line and precept upon precept, with 
many failures and' blunders on my part, ere my 
patient Guide will be able to inculcate this lesson 
of constantly distrusting the flesh within me, and 
constantly trusting the Christ within me. Yet 
He is never weary of teaching, and by His grace 
I shall assuredly learn it, and come to know in 
measure the blessed experience of the man of 
Tarsus, as he proclaims the great secret: "I am 

LIVING BY FAITH.'' Gal. 2 :20. 

II. the; daily doing o]f god's will. 

I am to accept God's will. That will is now to 
be the standard for the direction of my life. I 
am no longer to ask myself what I want to do 
but what God would have me do. Here God's 
Word as the revelation of that will is to take a 
new place in my life. I am to accept that Word 
as the standard by which I am to live. I am to 
accept it, however it may clash with my own 
thought or desire. I am to accept it, however 
others may differ or dissuade. When that Word 



then. 



"Behold, all things are become new" — 2 Cor- 
inthians 5 :i7. 

''Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" — Acts 
9: 6. 

AFTER the Lord's tender plea for the pres- 
entation of our bodies has been heeded: 
after His mastership has been acknowl- 
edged : after conviction and struggle have given 
place to decision — what then? 

I. the; fui.i.ni:ss of the spirit. 

"Will there be manifestation of the fullness 
of the Spirit when we yield our lives to Him? 
Will we be aware of a great inner change in 
those lives? Will there be a conscious trans- 
formation, a conscious new estate of Christian 
experience? To this we answer: — Is the slug- 
gish, stagnant river conscious of the inrushing 
waters of the sea, as it feels the throb and rush 
of her cleansing tides? Is the dark, gloomy old 
castle conscious of the fresh, sweet air that fills 
its windswept chambers, as they are flung wide 
open to it? Are the sightless eyes, that have 



52 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

been veiled for years in hopeless darkness, con- 
scious of the bright light of day, when it first 
breaks upon their enraptured vision? So, as- 
suredly, is there a conscious manifestation to the 
soul that has given itself, for all time and all 
things, to God. There must be, there will be 
a change; a realization of His presence to a de- 
gree never known before; a consciousness that 
the greatest crisis in the spiritual life has been 
passed. Nor does it matter whether such mani- 
festation of His fullness bursts upon us like the 
sudden out-flashing of the sun from behind dark 
clouds, or steals upon us like the slow-increasing 
glow of the morning twilight, gradual, but sure. 
Enough for us to know that such manifestation 
does come; that He does reveal Himself in full- 
ness, power, and blessing never known before. 
His beseeching us to present our bodies to Him 
was not idle entreaty; our yielding to Him was 
not vain experiment. He fulfills His promise, 
"I will manifest myself as I do not unto the 
world." Henceforth there is height and depth, 
peace and power, joy and blessing, communion 
and service, prayer and praise, such as the past 
has never possessed. To that soul who gives 
himself wholly to God, life is transformed beyond 
his fondest hopes; the blessings of the Abun- 
dant Life become richer and fuller as the days 
go by ; God does exceeding abundantly above all 
he can ask or think. He is "strengthed with 
might by His Spirit in the inner man;" ''filled 
with all the fullness of God;" made to ''abound 



THE2^. 53 

more and more ;" and out of this abundance over- 
flow ministry, testimony, and blessing to those 
about him." {''The Three-fold Secret of the 
Holy Spirit;' pp. 70, 71.) 

Not that surrender is a meritorious act that 
wins the fullness of the Spirit, but simply the act 
needed to give the Spirit a chance to fill us. God 
does not flood our being with great tides of spir- 
itual life, all independent of our own free will. 
He does not lay hold of men and women and 
carry them to the mountain tops of Christian life 
and blessing regardless of all choice and viola- 
tion of their own. On the contrary the Spirit's 
method seems to be first, conviction of God's full- 
ness and the soul's need; then a step of obedi- 
ence or faith which will give a waiting, willing 
God the desired chance to fulfill that need; and 
then life and blessing to him who obeys God in 
taking that step. The revelation and conviction 
of truth ; the obedience of faith consequent upon 
that revelation; and the blessing consequent 
upon that obedience is thus, perhaps, the in- 
variable order of the Spirit's working in the 
soul. It is in this divine order that surrender 
takes its true place, and that Paul cries, ''Yield 
yourselves to God." Surrender is not bribing 
or buying the grace of God, it is simply giving it 
opportunity to work. Surrender does not build 
the reservoir of God's abundant life, but it 
does open the channels through which that life 
may be "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
Ghost which is given unto us." Christ declares 



54 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

that out of our inmost being shall flow rivers 
of water. This spake He of the Spirit in them 
who had faith in Him. But surrender to God is 
one of the highest forms of faith. For, follow- 
ing the reception of the Spirit by faith, it is one of 
the highest forms of faith to so implicitly trust 
God as to give the whole life into His keeping, 
to do and submit to His will. Wherefore we 
may always expect to find the fuller life of the 
Spirit linked with that complete yielding to God 
which has been the them.e of our study in these 
pages. For God never fails to respond with di- 
vine love to every act of faith in His children, 
and the faith which received the Spirit at con- 
version cannot fail to knov/ the blessed fullness 
of that same Spirit when it yields itself wholly 
to Him who has been received. 

II. LIGHT. 

The Word says of Christ, "In Him was life, 
and the life w^as the light of men" (John i : 4). 
Christ, too, says of Himself, "He that followeth 
me . . shall have the light of life" (John 
8:12). This striking phrase "the light of life" 
suggests another sequence of surrender in the 
light which floods the soul from the presence of 
the abundant life of the Spirit. — The beams of 
the pale moon as she voyages across the mid- 
night heavens, fall cold and lifeless upon the 
recipient earth beneath. But the light of the 
sun, falling upon that same earth, warms and 
quickens into life and growth every plant its 
genial rays touch. It is not only light but is the 



TEEN. 55 

light of life, a peculiar kind of light, a light 
which emanates from a life-giving body, and 
which quickens, and thrills, and begets life in its 
illuminating as no other light can or does. Of 
this peculiar kind is the light which is shed 
abroad in the heart of a yielded child of God. 
It differs from mere knowledge. It is more than 
the cold, clear, light which enters through the 
inlet of the intellect. It is the light of life ; the 
light which radiates from the Spirit of Life with- 
in him. No other light illuminates and reveals 
as this does. The surrendered man sees things 
as never before. To him the Word of God be- 
comes a new book. 

It thrills; it quickens; it convicts of failure 
and of un-Christlikeness ; it searches and lays 
bare the innermost depths of the soul; it dis- 
closes the holiness of God ; it stimulates growth ; 
it begets new aspirations; it stirs to zeal and 
service before unknown. Nor need he marvel at 
this. For this book is simply the book of the 
Spirit of Life, who floods its pages with the 
light of Hfe, in him who has come to know His 
abundance of life. And not only from the Word 
of God, but also in the providences of God, and 
the inward monitions of the Spirit of God, does 
this new light break in upon his soul. Under it 
he now begins to understand the secret of 
guidance. The past lights up anew. Events 
apparently disconnected are seen to have been 
links in the chain of God's guidance. Impres- 
sions noted, but not understood, are perceived 



56 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

to have been the movings and leadings of God's 
Spirit within. The will of God is now seen in 
the chastenings and testings of life, as well as in 
its jo^s and blessings, and the indescribable ex- 
perience of seeing God at work in and through 
his life is sure proof that the light of life is 
illumining his inner man with its clear shining. 

III. PURi:?ICATlON. 

This, too, is an important phase of the after- 
ward of surrender. When we yield ourselves 
unto God as a living sacrifice while holy and ac- 
ceptable in our standing in Christ, we are far 
from holy in our state. Yet it is only in propor- 
tion to our holiness of life and walk in Him that 
God can work His will in and through us as 
His instruments. What we are, becomes the 
measure of what we can do, or rather of what 
God can do through us. We must be Christlike 
in inner life if we would be Christlike in out- 
ward deed. A holy God needs a holy instru- 
ment through which to live His holy life. All 
that is of self within us hinders the manifesta- 
tion of the Christ within us. Therefore we may 
expect that the God who wants a holy instru- 
ment for service will, as soon as it is yielded to 
Him, set His hand to its purification. **Whom 
the Lord loveth He chasteneth;" He "child- 
traineth," as the word signifies. Once yielded to 
Him He lays His hand upon us, not in law, but 
in grace: not in punishment but in purification: 
not with the wrath of a judge, but the love of 



the:^. 57 

a Father. So well pleased is He with His first- 
torn Son that He would, by chastening, conform 
us all unto the image of that Son. Wherefore 
it is with the tender love of a Father, solicitious 
that His child might attain unto His highest pur- 
pose of Christ-likeness that there comes upon us 
that child-training which is the explanation of 
the furnace, the crucible, and the refining pot. 
And we ourselves may either greatly aid, or sadly 
hinder His work in this regard. With our wills 
pliant and submissive to Him at all points very 
quickly will He carry on his blessed v/ork within 
us. But with those wills stubborn and discord- 
ant equally slow and unsatisfactory will be the 
process. ''Sanctify them through the Truth, Thy 
Word is Truth," prayed the Master. And it is 
even thus that the Father child-trains. The 
Spirit of Truth reveals the barrenness, poverty, 
and deformity of the self-life, and the richness, 
fullness, and loveliness of the Christ-Hfe within 
us. With such revelation of the Truth the Spirit 
seeks the assent of our will to putting off the 
one, and putting on the other. And just as we 
yield our assent will He be able to work into our 
state, our walk, that sanctification which, in our 
standing, is already complete in Christ Jesus. 

IV. SEPARATION. 

''The same light that shows us sin will show 
the way out of it," says Andrew Murray. So, 
too, the same Spirit who reveals sin will lead to 
detachment from it, and from the things which 



58 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

foster it. Thus it is that the surrendered child 
of God soon finds himself walking the pathway 
of separation. Things which were doubtful be- 
fore are now seen to be sinful. Many aforetime 
pleasures are relinquished because they no 
longer bring enjoyment but condemnation. Hosts 
of so-called innocent gratifications are clearly 
seen to be wasteful ones in him w^ho is here now 
"not to do his own will but the will of Him that 
sent him." The deep change in the inner motive 
of life — "ye are not your own" — soon works out 
its consequent changed view of what he dare do 
with the time, talents, and possessions which are 
in the stewardship of the man who now belongs 
to another. He disjoins himself from former 
favorite pursuits or indulgences because he sees 
them in an entirely new light, wondering mean- 
time why he did not always, or why others do 
not now see them thus. And, handfast with sep- 
aration from things comes isolation from men. 
Difference in desires raises barriers, as surely as 
accord therein begets fellowship. How far 
friendships hinge upon community of interest is 
only seen when the latter vanishes. The truly 
consecrated man or woman is the last in the 
world to cherish a "holier-than-thou" spirit that 
might repel men: longs to be closer to the heart 
and life of all men than ever before : is filled with 
love beyond all previous experience. Yet com- 
panionships change; friends seem to be drifting 
away; a conscious loneliness begins to steal into 
the heart. Part of the price of a persistent de- 



THEHJ. 59 

termination to climb the highest mountain peaks 
of separation and fellowship with God is to lose 
the comradeship of those who will not climb there 
with you. It seems a high price to pay but, 
necessary to win the prize, it is worth the paying. 
Better a thousand-fold the loneliness of separa- 
tion from the world than that of separation from 
God. Better the loneliness of Enoch than the 
companionship of Lot. There is much of danger 
that our false conception of "all things to all 
men," may make us to be nothing to any man. 
Isolation is insulation. But insulation is power, 
in the spiritual as well as the electrical sphere. 
The hearts that need help and light seek it not 
among those who walk on the level with them, 
but from those who walk on the heights with 
God. If loneliness comes into the consecrated 
life because of its close and conscientious walk 
with God then welcome such loneliness, for it 
only brings a closer fellowship with that Lonely 
One who was the greatest helper a needy, sor- 
rowing world has ever known, even though He 
walked in utter separation from it. 

V. SUFFERING. 

With purification and separation is linked suf- 
fering. There will be more or less of it in every 
yielded life. While the new man dwells in 
heavenly places, the old man has been put, and 
is to be kept, in the place of crucifixion. Thus 
the consecrated life has a dual aspect. It is re- 
lated to the risen Christ on the one hand, to the 



60 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

crucified Christ on the other. Hence our ex- 
perience is two-fold in its character. In our 
steady progress toward the consummation of our 
earthly Christian experience, that of abiding in 
Christ, God finds it needful to deal with us in 
relation to the self within, as well as the Christ 
within: from the standpoint of crucifixion, as 
well as that of resurrection. We bear His cross 
as well as His yoke. We experience the suffer- 
ing of the former, as well as the easiness of the 
latter. His yoke of obedience is easy when Self 
is on the cross. But Self must and does first 
suffer in the crucifixion. In times of such suffer- 
ing, when we find that God is dealing with us 
on the crucifixion side, let us patiently endure, 
for it is sure to be followed by a greater revela- 
tion of the power of His resurrection life within 
us. Let us ever remember that we bear about 
within us the old man, hanging in his appointed 
place — the cross, and that the place of death for 
him must forsooth be a place of suffering for 
us. How much of this we need, God alone knows 
and appoints. As we press nearer to the climax 
of abiding in the Resurrected One subtle phases 
of the self-life are revealed, all of which God ex- 
pects us to submit to the cross. Of this fact we 
may be assured, that as w^e "ahvays bear about 
in our body the deadness (dying) of the Lord 
Jesus," the life of the Lord Jesus will also be 
manifested in our mortal body (2 Cor. 4:10). 



THEN, 61 



VI. service:. 



God is sure to lead into service the life which 
is yielded to Him. Such servantship is our lofty 
privilege here. When we yield we yield our- 
selves servants to obey Him, and henceforth 
"His servants we are." To become a servant 
and find no service would be strange indeed. 
Therefore if we patiently wait He will surely 
bring us into our appointed life work. For we 
are members of His body and He desires to work 
through us His will and purposes for a lost 
world. It may not be the active service we have 
planned. He may design for us a ministry of 
prayer, of patience, even of suffering for His 
name. But the highest form of service is to be 
in His will whatever that may be for us. If time 
does not, eternity assuredly will reveal that in 
so doing we have supremely glorified God. The 
consecrated child of God may therefore trustfully 
wait upon God for the revelation of and guidance 
into his life work. In quietness and confidence 
shall be his strength, nor shall he be put to 
shame. The ministry which God has chosen for 
him in Christ from all eternity may burst upon 
him like the lightning flash. Or it may come to 
him step by step, in the steady, almost unnoted 
broadening of some humble ministry until his 
life-work is before him. By the joy he finds in 
such ministry, his adaptation to it, its constant 
presence in his thought and plan, God's seal of 
success upon it, and his own growing conscious- 



62 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

ness that God has called him to it, the Spirit 
will cause him to assuredly gather that this is his 
place of service. Happy is he who when he hears 
the voice behind him saying "this is the way, 
walk ye in it," takes up His yoke with joy and 
gladness to walk with Him until he too can say, 
*'I have finished the work Thou hast given me to 
do." Out of God's will he is like an ocean dere- 
lict, adrift without pilot, port, or purpose. But 
once yielded to God, and finding his appointed 
place, he is like the ruler of a well-laden mer- 
chant ship, voyaging with compass, steady wind, 
and well-marked chart to a definite haven where 
some glad day his Master's voice shall rejoice his 
eager heart with, "Well done . . thou hast 
been faithful . . I will make thee ruler over 
many things." 

All this I may expect of God after surrender. 
But now that I am His yielded servant, what may 
God justly expect of me? 

I. THE^ DAIILY WALK O^ FAITH. 

I am to cease from self-dependence, and am 
henceforth to live a life of constant trust in, and 
dependence upon the indwelling Christ. I have 
learned that in me alone, that is in my flesh, there 
is not one atom of spiritual life, and that the sole 
source of that spiritual life is the Son of God, 
who dwells within me in the Spirit. Apart from 
the Christ within me I am a spiritual pauper. 
The one great axiom of my new life is to be 
this: Trust the Christ within you. He is 



THEN. 65 

says 'love your enemies, and pray for them that 
despitefully use you and persecute you," I am to 
accept and set myself to do this revealed will of 
God, however impracticable or absurd the world 
may deem it. When that Word says ''casting all 
your care upon Him for He careth for you," I 
am to accept that as His will concerning care, 
and I am immediately to proceed to put it into 
practice. When that Word says, "My God shall 
supply all your need," I am to cease from all 
anxious care concerning my needs and look to 
God to supply as I obey. As I study God's 
Word, truth will flash upon me with which my 
daily life does not agree. I am not for a moment 
to question that truth, but am at once to bring 
my daily life into harmony with it. Thus to ac- 
cept the will of God, as revealed in the Word of 
God, and to incarnate it in one's own life and 
walk, is a most heart-searching process for God's 
surrendered child. It ministers to rapidity of 
spiritual growth as naught else can possibly do. 
It fills him with amazement as he sees how far 
his life has fallen short of God's will. 

I am to patiently submit to God's will. To be 
patient means literally "to stay under." Like the 
rough diamond under the polisher's tool, I am 
to stay under God's hand whatever may come 
upon me. Instead of the exultant spiritual ex- 
perience I look for may come suffering, tre- 
mendous testing, mysterious providences, dark- 
ness and uncertainty as to the future. Amid 
them all I am simply to stay under God's hand. 

5 



66 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

I am to say *'Thy will be done," both in good and 
evil. I am to learn "in whatsoever state I am 
therewith to be content." Many are willing to 
be in God's hand for service, but not under God's 
hand for purification. They are ready for the 
field, but not for the furnace or the forge. They 
are ready to minister, but not to patiently endure 
all things which come into their lives as either 
sent, or permitted, by Him. Yet part of my sur- 
lender and submission to God is to submit to 
His choice as to the kind of experience which is 
to come into my life at and after surrender. He 
suffered His own Son to come into a place of 
terrific testing at the hands of the adversary at 
the very beginning of His ministry. The servant 
is not greater than his Lord. God knows ex- 
actly what is best for me. Therefore, every event 
which comes into my life after surrender, how 
ever inexplicable, and hard to endure, I am to 
patiently submit to as the very thing which God 
deems best for my purification, strengthening, 
and growth in the Christian life. "The present 
circumstance which presses so hard against you 
(if surrendered to Christ) is the best shaped tool 
in the Father's hand to chisel you for eternity. 
Trust Him then. Do not push away the instru- 
ment, lest you lose also its work." Consider the 
unreasonableness of any other attitude. One day 
I surrender myself to God to live His will in- 
stead of my own. The next day comes trial, 
testing, or suffering. Straightway, perhaps, I 
grow rebellious and begin to doubt my sur- 



THEN. 67 

render, my acceptance, yea, even God Himself. 
That is, not twenty-four hours after I have said, 
'Xord, not my will, but thine," I break faith with 
God because something which is "not-my-will" 
has entered my life. Let me ever remember that 
my supreme aim as a surrendered servant is to 
live the submission w^hich I have made, and that 
this is exactly w^hat I am doing when I patiently 
submit to all things which touch my life. 

I am to do God's will. If by a definite act I 
offer myself to an employer for service it is mere 
honesty for me to proceed daily and faithfully 
to do that which I have yielded myself to do. 
And what but this is my surrender to God ? It is 
(see Chapter I.) ''the voluntary offering of our- 
selves to God to do His will instead of our own." 
This is what I yield myself to do. Therefore let 
me do it. Northing else would be fair to man. 
Surely naught else is fair to God. To accept, 
submit to, and hourly do His will is now to be 
the one aim and concern of my life. "My meat 
is to do the will of Him that sent me," said the 
Son. This, too, is our food as well as His: we 
grow strong upon it ; we soon become weak and 
faint without it. Remembering the lofty life- 
purpose of the first-born Son, 'Xo I come to do 
Thy will," we too as yielded sons are to keep this 
ever before us as the supreme single purpose of 
our earthly life, even as it shall be of our eternal 
life in the ages to come, ''The world passeth away 
and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will 
of God abideth forever." 



JRddnsscs 



the yielded Life, 7/ 

Committal, B4 

the Believer's Gift to God, 9S 



JIddresses 



Che Yielded Life. 

[Thoughts on the Surrendered Life, suggested 
by the death of P. Cameron Scott, founder of 
the African Inland Mission.] 

THERE are times when God speaks in the 
silence louder than in the message of ut- 
tered words. There comes to you to-day 
a vision of the old farm of by-gone days. You 
stood by the bars of the harvest field, gazing 
wistfully into the fading twilight, breathing deep 
draughts of the cool Summer air heavy with 
fragrance of the freshmown hay. Slowly the 
outcries and clamor of the day gave place to the 
lowing of cattle, twittering of birds, and rustling 
of leaves, and then, as those last sweet restrainers 
of the evening's stillness ceased, there came a 
silence, voiceless, impressive, intense; without 
jar, or stir, or stress; and in it God spoke to 
your Hstening soul. So here the mightiest mes- 
sage that can come to you will come, not in any 
tribute of praise, or rush of loving words con- 
cerning him whose face and form have vanished 



72 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

from our midst. But it is that message which — 
when you have laid aside this printed page — in 
the quiet of your own chamber of prayer ; in the 
stillness of your own heart-communing with 
God; with the picture of this young, heroic, 
Christ-like life before your tearful vision, the 
Holy Ghost Himself shall whisper to your 
soul: — the silent message of — A Surrendered 
Life. 

"Beloved, nozv are w^e the Sons of God." 
Raised from the dead; set in heavenly places; 
destined to be throne-mates of Jesus Christ, there 
is for us here a life of infinite privilege. It is a 
life of separation and servantship ; of peace and 
power; of conscious communion with, and ap- 
proval of our God; of unbounded joy and suc- 
cessful service; of triumph over besetting sin; 
a life rich, blessed, precious, and mighty in Christ 
Jesus ; a life any less than which is too poor for 
the Spirit born offspring of the God of all grace, 
glory and power; — the life surrendered to God. 
Such a yielded life is as normal, natural, and 
expected by Him, as the unyielded life is an 
anomaly, astonishment, and grief to His heart. 
The call of God to His believing children to such 
a life is universal; not one is exempt; all are 
saved to serve; all are ''created in Christ Jesus 
unto good w^orks," which God has ordained that 
we should w^alk in them; "He died for all that 
they which live should not henceforth live unto 
themselves but unto Him ;" He says to all "I be- 



THE YIELDED LIFE. 73 

seech you brethren that ye present your bodies a 
living sacrifice." 

Yet Cameron Scott for several years drifted 
along upon the listless tide of a shallow Chris- 
tian life, seemingly without a thought of God's 
personal claim upon himself. He beheld Christ 
uplifted to the sinner with burning words of ap- 
peal, but no impassioned lips sped to his heart, 
with earnest beseechings, that supreme message 
of Christ to His children — a message born of the 
very travail of His soul — "My child, I want your 
life." How true this is of myriads of lives to- 
day ! High crime, or woeful blunder is it in the 
church of Jesus Christ, wherever she has dared 
to substitute membership in her body : attendance 
upon her services: observance of her means of 
grace: and engagement in her manifold activi- 
ties, for that absolute surrender of the life and 
will which alone can satisfy the heart of God 
who seeks it, and the heart of His child who 
makes it. 

Reader, have you too been for years a child 
of God, and never yet had this message brought 
home to your heart and conscience with the con- 
viction, power, and intensity it merits? Or, hav- 
ing heard, do you perchance shrink, and heed 
not, because it means self-sacrifice, self-crucifix- 
ion, the cross of Christ, and, you, say, ''I am not 
ready for this ?" Behold the place you take ! *'I 
believe in a cross for the remission of sins; but 
none for the crucifixion of self. A cross for 
Christ, but none for me! Sins laid on Jesus' 



74 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

body — ^gladly ; but life laid at Jesus' feet — never ! 
For the fainting Christ, a cross naked, cruel, 
blood-stained; but a cross ornate, flower-be- 
decked: the gilded apex of a church spire: or 
the dangling bauble of a woman's necklace, is 
good enough for me !" Even so may we accept 
tne cross for salvation, but make void the cross 
for surrender and self crucifixion. Paul saw two 
crosses: or rather the same cross in a two-fold 
view. The first, a cross with Christ on it for 
him (Col. i. 20) ; the second, a cross on which he 
hung with Christ (Gal. ii. 20). The sinner must 
needs accept the former: the believer dare not 
refuse the latter. If he refuse, it is with im- 
measurable loss, for through this flood-gate 
alone comes the mighty inrush of peace and 
power our thirsty souls do covet. Many modern 
substitutes are there for the old-fashioned way 
of the cross of self-surrender and self-renuncia- 
tion, but they land us. in the slough of a barren 
selfishness, instead of in a place of power with 
God and man. Verily, except the church of 
Christ preach to the believer the cross of separa- 
tion and surrender, as faithfully as she preaches 
to the sinner the cross of salvation, the iron will 
distil from her blood, the fires quench in her 
heart, and the power die out apace from her 
resulting easy, listless, worldly life. 



There comes to every believer a time when the 
Holy Ghost begins to work mightily in his heart 



THE YIELDED LIFE. 75 

to induce this surrender of his life. This, too, 
is clear from Cameron Scott's experience. 
Worldly disappointments, baffled plans, sickness 
and bodily afflictions were used of God to show 
him the vanity of the world, and beget soul- 
hunger for a deeper heart-knowledge of the 
Christ whom he was serving only in name. Again 
and again did the Spirit move and trouble his 
heart with the text, "Ye are not your own, ye are 
BOUGHT with a price,'' until at last he yielded and 
laid that life at the feet of Him who had bought 
it with His own blood. Here again does not his 
life but image that of all God's bought-ones? 
Has not the Holy Spirit, beloved, patiently and 
gently thus wrought in your life through many 
vanished years? Have you not been restless; 
heart-sick of the world; unsatisfied with your 
spiritual experience; groping after the fuller, 
richer life you felt to be your lawful inheritance? 
Have you not had visions of heights meant for 
your feet, yet untrod: songs of rejoicing fash- 
ioned for your lips, yet unsung: closeness and 
preciousness of communion with Jesus, yet un- 
realized: abundance of rich fruitage and joyous 
service, yet unknown? Has there not been ever 
cherished within you an ideal which, amid all 
the debasement of your heavenly citizenship to 
the dead worldly standard about you, has never 
faded from your secret soul? And what does 
it mean ? Simply that the Holy Spirit, appointed 
to take of the things of Christ and show them to 
you, has been holding up before you a vision of 



76 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

the Christ not only as a Saviour, but as an obedi- 
ent servant; a world renouncing, self-renounc- 
ing God-man; a surrendered Son of God; and 
has been pleading with you to follow in his foot- 
steps. This is the secret of the mysterious, in- 
ner unrest of your soul. It is the Holy Spirit. 
He is moving you to that advanced step in your 
Christian life which will flood it with blessing; 
— the surrender of yourself to Him. And are 
you still resisting? When Cameron Scott was 
day and night thus beset by the Holy Ghost with 
these words, "Yt ari; not your own/' they so 
troubled his resisting heart that at last he sought 
to erace the text from his Bible! Beloved, are 
we resisting the Holy Ghost? Have we not cast 
out this truth from our lives, which is far worse 
than erasing it from our Bibles? Has not our 
gradual and uneasy descent to a lower, more 
selfish, more worldly place of Christian life, 
testimony, and service been in the face of earnest 
protest and pleading from a quiet inward mon- 
itor whose voice — known only too well — kept 
calling us always higher ? Let us beware ! For 
"the heart is deceitful, and desperately wicked." 
Thus resisting we may stand for years upon a 
threshold of blessing we shall never cross; we 
may catch glimpses of a promised land here 
whose joy shall ne'er be ours: 

Beyond the billows' foam 

We may see the lights of home. 

and yet never enter into the haven of rest, peace. 



THE YIELDED LIFE. 77 

privilege, and power which God has prepared 
even in this Hfe, for them that yield to Him. 



Yielding thus to the Holy Ghost, the surrender 
of the life to God brings untold blessing in its 
train. So was it with Cameron Scott. He 
became a transformed man. His lips were 
touched with divine power; his heart yearned 
over lost men ; his life was lifted from the world 
plane to the Christ-plane, into the closest sym- 
pathy with God's loftiest purpose for the world; 
his spiritual man grew by leaps and bounds ; the 
Word of God and secret prayer became well- 
springs of joy; his whole being throbbed and 
glowed with eager devotion, until at last it 
burned out its intense life for his Lord and 
King. And this, too, in a man who had once 
essayed to erace a consecration text from his 
testament! Child of God, behold what trans- 
formation the grace of God can work in a yielded 
life, and know assuredly that He stands ready 
to bring such into yours when surrendered to 
Him. The power you long for: the separation 
from the world unto your Lord; the close, con- 
scious communion with Him: the zeal for ser- 
vice and sacrifice : the finding of your own God- 
ordained place and path of happy service ; the 
joy, and peace, and blessing beyond your fondest 
dreams — all these will flood your life through 
the channel of the yielded life. So momentous 
and fruitful of mighty results in Cameron Scott's 



78 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

view was this definite act of consecration to God 
that, as it was his favorite message in Hfe, even 
so in the hour of death, calhng about him his 
fellow workers, he solemnly asked them, "Are 
your hands off?" And if our vanished friend 
could speak to us to-day from the glory, his 
message would be the same. With heart throb- 
bing in unison with his Lord's; with exultant 
realization that the sufferings of this present 
time were not worthy to be compared with the 
glory of his face to face vision of the Son of 
God ; with that infinite belittlement and shrinkage 
of all things worldly which the first brief instant 
of a standpoint shifted from earth to heaven 
would have wrought; he would say to us: "I 
have been in the presence of the Man who died 
for us ; I have seen His glory ; I have gazed upon 
the pierced side, the wounded hands, the scarred 
brow; I know now what His love unto death 
means. Though I should serve Him through 
countless eternities I can never requite Him; 
though I had a thousand lives, all should be laid 
at His feet. Seeing here what He has done for 
me, to come back to earth and not be a living 
sacrifice for Him would be agony unutterable. 
I charge you children of God who still walk the 
earth, by the unspeakable riches of His love 
novs^ seen, that you hold not back one ounce of 
treasure, one jewel of talent, one atom of 
strength, one moment of time, one throb of love. 
They here who gave but part, would fain have 
given all, and they who all have given, would 



THE YIELDED LIFE. 79 

fain have had more to give. Think not that you 
can give too much for Him. Though every drop 
of blood were poured forth in costHest Hbation; 
though every jot of waning strength were con- 
sumed for Him; though every feeble breath 
were spent in prayer and praise, and preaching 
of His Word; though every fleeting moment 
were laid fast hold of for His blessed service; 
yet all would be but a feeble measure of your 
love here, when you see Him as He is. 'I be- 
seech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies 
of God, that ye present your bodies a living 
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is 
your reasonable service.' " 



Again, the life that is yielded to God is in 
the truest sense a saved life. As the world 
marks a life of such rare ability, devotion, and 
loveliness cut off in the very flush and prime of 
young manhood, it cries out "What a waste !" 
But therein the world only shows its ignorance 
of that profound truth of God's spiritual king- 
dom, that fruitage comes through sacrifice; 
that the enlargement of the kingdom of God 
comes not from the lives that are saved, but 
the lives which — from the world's standpoint 
— are wasted. God's truth is: — ''Whosoever 
will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever 
will lose his life for My sake shall find it." 
Here is a husbandman with two measures of 
golden grain. There comes one who says to 



80 THE 8URRENDERED LIFE. 

him, "Do not waste it; save it; care for it; 
store it against the time of coming famine, 
when every grain will be precious." He heeds, 
and treasures it up in the waiting granary. 
Now comes another, and says: ''Take this 
measure and cast it broadcast into the dark 
damp earth. Be, prodigal ; spare it not ; fling 
it abroad, and leave it to die." This too is 
heeded, and the careful, frugal world, turning 
with approval from the plump, well housed, 
comfortable grains to those that lie scattered, 
buried, and dying in the earth, cries aghast, 
''What a waste!" But the months roll on 
apace, the harvest time is come, and again, as 
ever, the foolishness of God is wiser than men. 
In the granary still lies the grain that was 
saved, not one jot increased, but rather 
shrunken, and doomed soon to must, shrivel, 
and decay. But mark the transformed field 
where the "lost and wasted" once found its 
lonely grave ! In dense, serried array, a 
countless multitude of speary stalks bend and 
sway under the weight of golden grain, and 
wait, with glad expectancy, the harvester's stroke 
that shall feed them to a starving world. And 
could your listening ear catch the secret of this 
miracle of abundance every swaying stalk would 
whisper to you: "At my feet is a tiny grave; 
in that grave a grain of wheat once gave up its 
life ; and out from that grave have I sprung up 
into this hundred fold abundance. Know ye not 
that 'except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 



THE YIELDED LIFE. 81 

and die it ahideth alone? But if it die it shall 
bring forth much fruit.' This is the law of the 
wheat field." 

Child of God, hath not the Master proclaimed 
this the law of His kingdom? Out from the 
surrender and death; out from the very toil, 
hardship and sacrifice; out from the tears, the 
sufferings, the strong cryings of the yielded life 
spring God's eternal harvests. Such a life is in 
the profoundest sense saved for God. But if 
your life is a selfish one, absorbed in laying up 
earthly treasures, gratifying earthly ambitions, 
following worldly pleasures and pursuits, wdth 
naught but to eat, drink and take its ease, though 
your soul were saved, is not your life lost to 
God? He cannot purify it; empower and in- 
spire it ; whisper His secret counsels to it ; guide 
it into the place of blessing and service He has 
prepared for it in Christ; sow it in the world- 
field to bring forth bountiful fruitage for time 
and eternity, if it is not yielded to Him — can 
He? Is it not lost to Him for this age! So far 
as it is concerned, is not the accomplishment of 
His mighty purpose, for this generation in which 
it lives, baffled and frustrated? Does such a life 
satisfy you? Does it satisfy Jesus? True you 
are saved; but are you content to be merely 
saved "so as by fire?" Do you not long to bear 
some fruitage for Him? To lay some trophies 
at His feet? If the yielding of your life — poor 
requital as it is for His deathless love — is yet a 
j5 



82 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

sacrifice of sweet savor to Him, will you not 
heed His gentle entreatings? 

"Brethren, the time is short; it remaineth 
that both they that have wives be as though they 
had none; and they that weep, as though they 
wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they 
rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they 
possessed not; and they that use this world, as 
not abusing it ; for the^ :pashion of this wori.d 
PASSFTH away/' The Lord is at hand. The 
tremulous veil that hangs between time and 
eternity, between mortality and glory, is sway- 
ing with the very breath of the Presence of the 
Coming One. If He should come to-night and 
snatch you into the glory, not a surrendered 
servant with ''hands off," but a busy worldling 
with hands still marred with the indent of your 
desperate clutch upon worldly baubles, and lips 
still ajar with your latest refusal to His beseech- 
ings for your yielded life, would you not be 
''ashamed before Him at His coming?" Are 
you still vacillating: still compromising: still 
in fleshy dalliance with the world? Has the 
glitter of earth's vain trifles not yet faded before 
the vision of the Crucified? Has your heart not 
yet cried out "O Galilean, Thou hast conquered !" 
May you clutch earthly prizes, and gain the 
heavenly ones too? Can you walk in the flesh, 
and walk with Him too? Dare you pursue the 
same pleasures, lust after the same riches, serve 
the same master as the avowed worldling? Be- 
loved, YiDivD, YiKLD thyself to Him. Else that 



THE YIELDED LIFE. 83 

solemn trust of a human life which he has given 
thee to live, and live but once, will, like the 
feathered arrow, soon have sped, and fall aim- 
less and broken at the feet of Him who would 
have made it the choicest weapon in His quiver 
for mighty and victorious warfare, if thou hadst 
but yielded it to Him, 




2. 

Cotnmiital. 

"Commit thy zvay unto the Lord; trust also in 
Him, and He shall bring it to pass." — Ps. 37: 5. 

WE have seen that the gist of the truth 
concerning surrender is found in Paul's 
terse sentence "Yield yourselves unto 
God." This single word "yourselves" svveeps 
in the whole scope of our lives, from horizon to 
horizon. It is the descriptive word of a quit- 
claim deed which transfers forever to God all 
we are and all Vv-e have. Let us, reflecting upon 
its all-inclusiveness, notice that it beseeches us 
to yield unto God : — 

I. Our ALL^ in committal. God would not 
only have us yield all that we are to His service, 
but all that vve have to Kis keeping. He would 
have His yielded children to be at perfect rest 
and peace concerning all the varied interests of 
their lives. He would have them "anxious in 
nothing:" "casting all their care upon Him:" 
"kept in perfect peace" because they trust in 
Him. Essential to this is the great lesson cf 
committal. For perfect peace has its human 
condition in a perfect committal. This would 



COMMITTAL. 85 

He have us fulfil that He may show His perfect 
power to keep. Suppose, by way of illustra- 
tion, you own a rare and precious diamond. It 
has nev/ly come into your possession as an heir- 
loom from a departed loved one. By and by, as 
you come to realize the priceless vrorth of the 
gem, you begin to be burdened with anxious 
care in the keeping of it. Every noise at night 
startles you : every daily narrative of theft or 
burglary fills your heart v/ith fear: every pass- 
ing week but increases the burden of your care 
and disquietude concerning this treasure. But 
at last a sym.pathetic friend who knows your sad 
plight approaches you some day with this timely 
suggestion: ''Friend," says he, ''your heart is 
burdened with care in the matter of this jewel 
because you yourself are keeping if. And that 
heart will continue to he burdened so long as you 
continue to keep it. Do you not know that at a 
certain site in your town stands a strong trust 
building to which you may commit the keeping 
of your gem and be at perfect rest concerning it V 
Impelled by these words you go down town 
to the spot named. You v/alk around the great 
building, noting its massive walls, strong doors, 
and barred and bolted windows. You go inside 
and scrutinize closely the great vault: the time 
lock with its marvelous m.echanism: the compli- 
cated lock-boxes for the keeping of treasures. 
Perfectly satisfied, you commit your diamond to 
the cashier, see him deposit it, and close the steel 
doors, locking and double-locking them against 



86 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

all intruders. And now something has happened 
to the jewel. You have committed it to a place 
which is able to keep it against all intrusion. But 
something has happened to you too. For you 
find yourself at perfect peace about your treas- 
ure. The thief may prowl about your man- 
sion, break your bolts and bars, yea, even enter 
your home. But he can not disturb your peace 
concerning the now committed jewel. When- 
ever you think of the diamond you think of the 
strong trust-building which now securely keeps 
it, and straightway you are at rest. At rest 
indeed concerning your diamond. But there is 
still another lesson for you to learn. For you own 
a valuable watch which is yet in your keeping. 
Concerning this you still bear this same strain of 
anxious care until your friend comes again and, 
telling you that they also keep watches in the 
same trust-building, advises you to commit yours 
to its secure keeping. This you do and peace 
comes concerning the committed watch. And 
now as you continue to worry over your stocks, 
and bonds, and other valuables, your friend comes 
at the last and tells you that you need have no 
care at all concerning anything. ''For," says 
he, "they keep in that trust-building not 
only diamonds and watches, but stocks, bonds, 
mortgages, securities, leases and deeds; in short, 
all the personal valuables you own. Now if you 
will just make a complete committal, you will 
have complete peace." Whereupon you gather 
up everything you possess and sweepingly com- 



COMMITTAL. 87 

mit the whole of it to that trust-building which 
has already won your confidence by its safe keep- 
ing of your first and rarest treasure, and then 
you come into perfect rest because of your per- 
fect commital to a perfect trustee. 

Children of God is not the truth very plain here ? 
And does it not convict our hearts? There was 
a time in your life when you were sore burden- 
ed in the effort to keep the rarest jewel in exist- 
ence — that of your own soul. After years of self- 
effort, self-righteousness, and agonizing struggle 
you gave up the effort and simply and trustfully 
threw yourself upon Jesus Christ, looking to 
Him in helpless trust to keep that which you 
had committed to Him. Wherefore for years 
you have been at rest concerning the keeping of 
this priceless jewel of your own soul, for you 
know whom you have believed and are persuaded 
that He is able to keep that which you have com- 
mitted to Him. Yet though at peace concerning 
your soul's salvation, your life is burdened with 
anxious care about a host of other things. You 
are anxious about your business, your health, your 
loved ones, your future, your friends, your ser- 
vice and ministry for Him, and your number- 
less other interests. Has it never dawned upon 
you that just as you committed your soul to 
Jesus Christ so He would have you commit every 
thing else to Him? Have you never learned 
that only a perfect committal will give you a per- 
fect peace ? Have you never seen that the blessed 
Lord is lovingly and tenderly interested in every 



88 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

detail of your life, and would have you commit 
all to Him, even as you committed the keeping 
of your soul? 

For care is linked with keeping. He who keeps 
the treasure bears the care. Thus if we try to 
keep our lives we bear the care. But if we com- 
mit them and all their interests to God He bears 
it. Yet hov/ can God keep that which we do not 
commit? ''I know whom I have believed and 
am persuaded that He is able to keep" — what? 
That which I keep myself? That which I insist 
upon carrying, managing, and worrying over? 
Nay ^^that which I have committed unto Him.'' 
''Casting all your care upon Him" is as true for 
us as ''for He careth for you" is true of Him. 
Wherefore, beloved, is there anything in your 
life that has long been haunting shadow of 
care, a burden of anxiety, a barrier between you 
and perfect peace? If so, then search your heart 
and see if this be not the explanation of it. Take 
it, and definitely, finally, and irrevocably commit 
it to God. How else can He possibly keep it? 
Is this not the secret of your failure? There is 
nothing wrong with the trust-building ! You are 
sure of that. ''He abid]]:th faithful." It must 
be in your failure to commit, for He has never 
since the v/orld began failed to ke:e:p that which 
has been committed to Him. Wherefore if there 
be lack of perfect peace in your life hasten to 
m.ake that perfect committal which will permit 
a perfect Christ to prove His perfect keeping. 



COMMITTAL. 89 

2. Our WII.I.S, in submittai,. Not only are we 
to commit our life to God, but also to let Him 
have His way with it. With the committal of 
all things should go submission in all things. 
When we yield our lives we yield our plans con- 
cerning those lives, and accept God's dealings 
with them. Not only "commit your way unto 
the Lord," but "trust also in Him." Not only 
take your hands off but let Him put His hands 
on just as He may see fit. Many of us err here. 
We commit the clay into the potter's hana, but 
we will not stay under that hand. We commit 
the marble to the divine sculptor, but we do not 
relish His use of the chisel. We com.mit our ship 
to the broad ocean of His v/ill and purpose, but 
we do not like His grasp upon the helm. Where- 
fore when the potter begins to mould with pres- 
sure that is painful to us : the sculptor to smite 
and chisel until it hurts: or the helmsman to 
steer into the teeth of storm, gloom, and tempest 
that chill our hearts with fear, we would fain 
shrink from the pressure, the blow, the unknown 
path which we had not included in our plan for 
life. 

But this we may not do. For God alone 
knows the very best for the life that has been 
placed in His hands. He alone sees the prepa- 
ration it needs for an eternal existence hereafter. 
We know but a brief share of its present. He 
knows its end "from the beginning." He alone 
knows how to shape it to His perfect purpose. 
He knows what will best work out its eternal 



90 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

weight of glory in the ages to come. But to do 
this, He needs a submitted will. He cannot 
work the wish of His Father-heart for us if we 
shrink, waver, and rebel under our new and 
unexpected treatment. The ''Commit'' that 
puts all into His hands needs the ''Trust also" 
that keeps all things under His hand. There- 
fore let us not only sweepingly commit to God's 
keeping, but trustfully submit to God's chast- 
ening. Let us not only give ourselves into His 
hand, but also stay under His hand as He deals 
out to us that which is best from His stand- 
point, however grievous it may be from ours. 
As we deliberately and irrevocably commit all 
unto His keeping, let us say to Him : "Lord, this 
life which I now yield to Thee, I know not what 
is best for it, but Thou dost. While I carried out 
my own will concerning it, I found naught but 
failure, mistake, fruitlessness, disappointment. 
Now, yielding it to thee, I submit also to Thy 
will concerning it. As Thou mayest see fit, send 
prosperity or adversity: rest or toil: service or 
suffering: abasement or exaltation: crucifixion 
or glorification: the starlit night of faith or the 
meridian blaze of Thy conscious fullness. Stay 
not Thine hand: spare not the chastening fires: 
cool not the furnace of crucible until Thou hast 
had Thy perfect way with me. By Thy grace I 
will walk with Thee, though the path be not of 
my choosing. I will trust Thee when I can not 
see Thee. I will submit to Thee when I can not 
understand Thee. Yea, I yield myself wholly, 



COMMITTAL. 91 

absolutely, irrevocably, in humble, trustful sub- 
mission, to Thy blessed will." 

It will help us much in so coming into a place 
of perfect submissiveness to God's will if we 
ponder carefully a few self-evident truths. They 
are these. Our God is a God of tender, compas- 
sionate, unchangeable, and limitless lovk. And 
the: God o^ limiti^ess hovt is worthy of 
LIMITLESS TRUST. If these be not truths then 
there is no truth in the universe ! If the Man 
who died for us does not perfectly love us, and 
is not worthy of unconditional, boundless trust, 
then is the gospel of the grace of God a fable, 
and the faith of His redeemed ones but the flimsy 
fabric of a dream. And if the God of limitless 
love is worthy of limitless trust shall we not ac- 
cord it to Him, or else stand condemned in our 
own hearts? Let us be honest. Which is the 
troubler of our soul? Do we doubt God's perfect 
love and consequent perfect trustworthiness? 
If so let us confess that with secret shame. Do 
we believe in God's perfect love and perfect faith- 
fulness ? Then let us yield Him that perfect trust 
and submissiveness which such belief has a right 
to claim. 

Moreover if God is Love His will is the most 
perfect thing in the universe for us. His chil- 
dren. The Holy Ghost says it is a "perfect 
will." (Rom. xii. 2.) He does not say that we 
always see it to be perfect, but that it is perfect. 
Therefore it is as perfect when we cannot undei- 
stand it as when we can; as perfect when it 



92 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

seems unjust and grievous to us, as when it 
seems just and acceptable; as perfect when the 
way is rough, toilsome, and shrouded in thick 
darkness, as when it is smooth, easy of ascent, 
and flooded with noon-day light. The question 
that comes to us should be : — Is, or is not the will 
of God, who is incarnate Love, the best thing 
in the world for us? If it is, then let us either 
yield to it, or confess that we do not care to 
so do. And yielding ourselves because it is 
good and perfect do not let us draw back when 
it seems to be otherwise. So to do is to de- 
throne Faith and enthrone our poor judgm.ent 
in her stead. 

Finally, the God who is Love is also supreme. 
Therefore everything which comes into our lives 
is either sent by him or permitted by Him. 
Reason grows dizzy and staggers at this, but 
faith calmly and trustfully accepts it as an eternal 
truth. For God himself declares it. ''All things 
v/ork together for good to them that love Him." 
Not that all things are good in themselves: for 
evil is not good. But all things work togstheir 
for good to them that love Him. In some way 
God will make even the wrath of man to praise 
Him. In some way the God who rules in right- 
eousness will over-rule all unrighteousness. In 
some way even the evil that assails His children 
is, by the time it reaches them, in His permis- 
sive will for them. This is inscrutable to us 
now. But faith bows under His hand and joy- 
fully accepts His assurance ''What I do thou 



COMMITTAL. 93 

knowest not now but thou shalt know hereafter !" 
"You meant it for evil but God meant it for 
good," said the sobbing Joseph to his awe- 
stricken brethren. The blackest crime of human 
history was the crucifixion of Him vvho w^as 
that Joseph's great anti-type. It seem.ed the 
master-stroke of Hell: the final extinguishment 
of the light of the v/orld : the utter defeat of the 
God of the universe. Yet out of it flowed the 
blessings of a redemption which shall glorify God 
through all the ages of eternity. "O, the depth 
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge 
of God ! How unsearchable are His judgments, 
and his v/ays past finding out !" Beloved, that 
God is love : that as such He is worthy of abso- 
lute trust: that His will must be the best thing 
in existence for us : and that all which comes to 
us is either sent or suffered to come, by Him — 
these are great foundation stones of "the truth 
as it is in Christ Jesus." Have we forever set- 
tled down upon them ? In the full light of them 
an absolute submission to the will of the Christ 
of love is not only intelligent and reasonable, 
but will bring us into a place where His eternal 
peace can keep our hearts beyond all our fondest 
dreams. 

In attestation of these truths is recalled here 
the remarkable experience of a child of God, 
narrated to the writer fromi her own lips. Earn- 
estly longing and seeking for years to know the 
truth of the fullness of life in Christ she came 
one day into a Bible class in an interior city cf 



94 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

this state. There as she sat eagerly drinking in 
the truth, God sent to her hungry heart the mes- 
sage it had long needed. She learned that the 
Spirit whom she had been beseeching for years 
to enter had already come in to abide forever. 
She saw that what God wanted was not long and 
agonizing waiting and petition for His incom- 
ing, but an absolute submission of the will in 
all things and for all time to Him who was al- 
ready indwelling. And so one bright Sabbath 
day rejoicing in the faith of His indwelling, she 
yielded herself a living sacrifice unto God, in 
complete and trustful submission to His will 
whatever it might be. No great manifestation of 
power followed: no rapturous uplift: no won- 
derful vision of things of which it was unlawful 
to speak. But her hitherto restless soul was 
flooded with peace, the unspeakable peace of 
the God of peace Himself, filling her soul with 
His conscious presence in response to the utter 
yielding of the being to Him. The passing months 
found that peace still abiding. Through that 
absolute yielding of herself to His will, God 
had anchored her soul in a haven of rest by 
moorings so secure that no storm seemed able to 
rend them. She was established in Christ Jesus. 
And now came a test that proved to her forever 
what God could do with a submitted will and a 
trustful heart. 

"I had a son," said she, "a youth about 
eighteen years of age. He was a bright, joy- 
ous boy: a Christian, but not living as close 



COMMITTAL. 95 

to God as my heart yearned to see him. — 
But him, too, as well as all else that I possessed, 
I had definitely committed to God when I made 
my surrender. When the adversary tried to 
break my peace, tempting me to doubt concern- 
ing my boy, I simply lifted up my heart and 
said, 'Lord, I have committed him to Thee; 
Thy will be done in his life.' One summer 
night, after he had retired to his room, attracted 
by the sound of music in a near-by square, he 
went out, unknown to me, to enjoy it. Strolling 
up street in company with another lad, these 
two exchanged some words of boyish badinage 
with a man standing by, and then passed on. 
As they passed the corner of an alley farther on, 
this man stepped out from its shadow and shot 
my boy dead on the spot. At midnight my door- 
bell rang, and the policeman, to whom I opened, 
said: 'Madam, your son is seriously hurt and 
you are wanted immediately.' I quickly called 
my husband and other son and hastened up the 
street, not knowing what was coming. All I re- 
member now of that midnight journey was that 
as I sped along the silent street I found myself 
lifting up my heart to God and repeating again 
and again: Xord, I have committed him to 
Thee: Lord, Thy will be done: They will be 
done.' When I reached the spot I kneeled by 
the prostrate form of my boy, touched his face, 
grasped his hands, and lifted his head, only to 
find him weltering in a pool of blood, already 
dead! When the awful fact dawned upon us, 



96 THE 8URRENDERED LIFE. 

my husband fainted, and my other son was well- 
nigh overcome with grief. But there, in the 
dead of night, in the av/fulest hour of a mother's 
life, I came to knov/ what God could do with a 
submissive will and a trustful heart. I would 
never have thought it possible for God to keep 
a weak, trembling, stricken soul as He kept me 
in that dreadful hour. As I knelt by my mur- 
dered boy the fountains of grief seemed stayed. 
Underneath m.e were unseen, everlasting arms. 
A flood-tide of unutterable peace swept into my 
soul, and brooded over my stilled heart with 
an eternal calm that nothing in the universe, it 
seemed, could ever disturb. When the day dawn- 
ed men and women flocked into my house and 
cried, 'What kind of a woman are you ? What do 
you miean? Hov/ do you explain this strange 
calm that seems to possess you?' and I could 
only answer — 'It is not I, but Christ, Christ !' " 

Troubled one, is the way gloomy, and does God 
seem harsh and unloving in the inscrutable trials 
and amictions that He has permitted to come 
into your life, even though He himself has not 
directly sent them ? Does the burden seem more 
than you can bear? The trial so peculiar that 
the darkness can never be dispelled? The grief 
too agonizing ever to be soothed? The wound 
too deep ever to be healed ? Then remember this : 
only through perfect submissiveness and perfect 
trustfulness can God have His perfect way in 
our lives. Do w^e want Him to have that way 
and carry out His highest purpose for us ? Then 



COMMITTAL. 97 

no affliction is too grievious, no furnace too hot, no 
price too costly in comparison with the infinite 
blessedness which comes with entire submission, 
and unconditional trust in Him. Since this is 
the sole condition by which God can perfectly 
work through us, it must be the supreme one 
He would have wrought in us. Well is it for 
us that He will not even stop short of suffering 
in order to accomplish it. Here it is that divine 
fatherhood overtops human. For human par- 
ents through sympathy may spare us suffering. 
But in the light of eternity the highest exhibit 
of God's Father love will be seen in His refusal 
to spare us our deepest suffering because in so 
doing we would have missed our highest good. 




3. 
tbe Believer's Gift to God. 



''They -first gave their own selves to the Lord, 
and unto us by the will of God." 2 Cor. 8 : 5. 

This verse is rich in its treasures of truth. As 
the rose opens its petals under the morning sun- 
Hght, so does the quartet of truths in this pas- 
sage unfold under the light of the Holy Spirit. 
These truths are : 

Dedication, 

Transformation. 

Revelation. 

Ministration. 



DEDICATION. 

"They first gave their own selves to the Lord." 
In the fashioning and keeping of our own 
lives there are no hands so safe as God's. 
He has planned those lives in Christ Jesus 
from before the ages. He knows their 
strength and their weakness; He knows how 
to mould them to a nicety to their destined end; 
He knows the place which He has prepared for 
them ; He knows the preparation needed for that 
place ; He knows their limitations and their pos- 
sibilities ; He knows how they can be best made 



THE BELIEVER'S GIFT TO GOD. 99 

to SO glorify Him and advance His kingdom here 
as that their influence shall last through all eter- 
nity. And so, knowing this, the Macedonians 
did not take these lives and try to fashion them 
after their own individual desires and plans, and 
then, after years of disappointment and failure, 
hand the fragments over to God for Him to use. 
But they first gave their own lives into God's 
hands before the mistakes of their own hands 
marred them. 

Well do we recall the hour of crisis in the life 
of a dear young friend but a few years ago. 
Bright, winsome, gifted: of pure heart, lofty 
ideal and knightly life, he stood at the parting 
of the ways. One was the way of a secular call- 
ing, with all its glittering prizes and gratified 
ambitions. The other was the way of abandon- 
ment to the Lord with all the sacrifice, service, 
and surrender involved therein. There in his 
own room, with the bright sunshine streaming 
through the window and falling upon his bowed 
form, young Hugh Beaver chose the latter and 
first gave his own self to the Lord. 

But three short years elapsed when we stood 
by his coffin and looked into his sweet face, pale 
and rigid in death. As we thought of his beau- 
tiful life as a servant of his Lord; of his power 
in prayer ; of his great influence over the young 
men of the colleges ; and of the close and climax 
of his ministry at Northfield, when hundreds of 
cultured college women sat at the feet of this 
young teacher with Iheir lives stirred to their in- 



100 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

nermost depths by the power of God's Spirit 
through him, there came to us the overwhelming 
reahzation of what a calamity it would have been 
had this young life, with but three years of span 
before it, been given to the world, instead of to 
God for the world, and there in that solemn hour 
we realized the need that God's children "^rst 
give their own selves to Him." 

What costly mistakes we make here. This 
life, which we shall live but once; this life, with 
which every unsuccessful experiment means eter- 
nal loss; this life, the most solemn and precious 
trust that can be put into human keeping — we 
dare to lay our hands upon, and abase it from 
God's eternal destiny to our own selfish ends. 
The unskilled child essays to run the delicate 
and costly mechanism of a great locomotive, of 
whose power and possibilities the child knows 
absolutely naught. There is but one result. The 
great machine "runs wild," and wreck and ruin 
follow its unguided flight. Even so are we who 
lay our hands upon these lives of ours, regard- 
less of our Lord's claim upon them.. Sad wreck 
do we make of them. Disappointments, baffled 
plans, darkness, clouding of God's presence, suf- 
fering, break-downs, — bodily, mental and spir- 
itual, — and utter failure are the woful results. 
And then after years of disappointment and fail- 
ure, we hand over to God the marred remnant 
for Him to use. 

And yet even then how good our Lord is ! How 
great His grace ; how tender His love ! Without 



THE BELIEVER'S GIFT TO GOD. 101 

a word of chiding or a whisper of reproach, He 
deigns to take what is left. He puts the past 
under the blood. He glorifies Himself unspeak- 
ably with the yielded remnant, using it as best 
He can. Withal, while this is His second best 
for us; while, mayhap, these years of disap- 
pointment and affliction were His only means 
of bringing us to Himself, let us ever remember 
that His best is always that, like the Macedon- 
ians, we "first give our own selves to the Lord," 
and then to the life work which has been or- 
dained for us "by the will of God." 

Trans:^ormation. 
"Be ye transformed." — Rom. 12: 2. 

With the Macedonians, as with all of God's 
children, after dedication came transformation. 
When they gave their lives into the hands of God 
they were filled with the Spirit of God. We need 
not read very far between the lines to discern 
this second great truth of our text. Mark the 
words of fullness and of transformation : "abun- 
dance" — ''joy" — "abounded" — "riches" — "liber- 
ality" — "beyond their power" — "they were will- 
ing," and the like. 

How clear it is, and how consistent with the 
love of God, the will of God and the Word of 
God, that all His children, like the Macedonians, 
should live a life of fulness; that they who re- 
ceive the Spirit in regeneration should be filled 
with the Spirit at dedication. The Word of God 



102 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

abounds in texts that prove God's will of full- 
ness for His children. "Blessed are they which 
do hunger and thirst for they shall be filled;" 
''Be ailed with the Spirit;" "And of His full- 
ness have all we received;" "And they v/ere all 
niled with the Holy Ghost;" "That ye might he 
filled with all the fullness of God." So, too, our 
Lord says, "I am come that they might have life 
and that they might have it more abundantly;" 
"The water that I will give you shall be in you a 
well of water springing up into everlasting life." 
So, too, in Acts 2: 17, the Holy Ghost says 
through Peter, "I will pour out of my Spirit." 
God's will of life in Christ for us is not stint but 
abundance; not poverty, but riches; not weak- 
ness, but power; not scantiness, but fullness. 
As the mountain spring pours out its cooling 
streams; as the great pipe organ pours out its 
flood of melody ; as the willing heavens pour out 
their showers of refreshing, so it is God's will to 
pour out the fullness of His Spirit upon His 
children. But mark upon whom that fullness 
comes (verse 18.) "I v/ill pour out my Spirit 
upon my servants, i. e., my bondslaves ;" upon 
His slaves; His bond slaves; His servants who 
are wholly dedicated to Him, who are wholly 
given up to do His will ; upon these not only does 
the Spirit come, but He is poured out in all His 
fullness of life and light and power. Upon our 
Lord Jesus, God poured out the Spirit "without 
measure." But of His fullness do we all receive, 
if not in degree, yet surely in kind, if we first 



TEE BELIEVER'S GIFT TO GOD. 103 

give ourselves wholly to God ; if we say, 'Xo, I 
come to do Thy will/'even as He did. 

Two men were walking by the banks of a river^ 
at the twilight hour. One of them, quoting the 
words of a famous Christian worker, said : ''The 
world has yet to see what God can do with one 
man wholly dedicated to Him." His companion 
stopped and said: "Say that again." Again 
his friend repeated with renewed emphasis : "The 
world has yet to see what God can do with one 
man wholly dedicated to Him." Lifting his hand 
in the twilight Dwight L. Moody, for it was he, 
said : ''By the grace of God, I will be that man." 
And he went forth to do a work for God and His 
kingdom such as has been given to but few of 
His servants. Here was the hiding of the great 
evangelist's power. Wholly dedicated to the will 
of God he was transformed and filled by the 
Spirit of God, and went forth to do the work 
of God. "God's man, in God's place, doing God's 
work, in God's way," are the signficant words of 
Hudson Taylor as to the place for the life of ev- 
ery true servant of God. 

Mr. Meyer, too, tells of the time in his own 
life when young Mr. Studd was used of God 
to bring home this same truth to himself. He 
tells of his own heart hunger for a deeper life 
in Christ, and how the young Cambridge student 
pressed upon him the duty and the privilege of a 
complete dedication of his life to the Lord, and 
of a simple and absolute trust in the Spirit of his 
Lord to transform him and fill him, and work 



104 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

perfectly and completely through him. His own 
will for his servant's life of ministry in Him. 
And then the great London preacher tells how he 
went forth into a little woodland copse; how he 
knelt there in the hush of nature's own sanctu- 
ary; how he simply and trustfully yielded his 
life to God, and went forth believing that His 
Spirit was in him, and trusting Him henceforth 
to will and to do of His good pleasure through 
him. No great manifestation followed this sim- 
ple step of faith and obedience. No ecstatic 
spiritual experience flooded his soul. But from 
that time he realized the presence and power of 
God within him, and was ushered into the full- 
ness of his wonderful life of power and service 
for Him. Transformation followed dedication. 
Fullness followed the faith of surrender. Aban- 
donment to God brought the rich and blessed 
ministry of God which has made the name of 
this consecrated servant a sweet savor of peace 
and blessing to multitudes of God's seeking chil- 
dren. 

"Young men," said the saintly missionary, 
George Bowen, as he stood before his students 
in the class-room, "young men, the Spiritual 
presence of Jesus Christ in my heart is more 
real than the bodily presence of you who sit be- 
fore me this morning." Is the presence of 
Christ as real to us in the Spirit as it was to this 
godly servant of the Lord? Is He just as real 
to us as men and things are? Does His life fill 
us as the self life fills the worldling? And if not, 



TEE BELIEVER'S GIFT TO GOD. 105 

why not? Our Lord Himself in John 14: 21 
discloses the open secret of His own abundant 
life. There He distinctly says "I will manifest 
myself to you." It is His plan, His desire, His 
full purpose, to fill all His children with His own 
fullness of life. And what is the secret? "He 
that keepeth my commandments I will manifest 
myself to him." "And this is my commandment : 
"That you love one another." "And greater love 
hath no man than this, that a man lay doimi his 
life for his friends." The greatest command- 
ment of Christ is love — love of others. There- 
fore he who keeps His greatest commandment 
will have His greatest manifestation. But the 
climax of love is the laying down of our lives 
even as He laid down His. Therefore the climax 
of that manifestation is this dedication of the 
life to Him. As we perfect our dedication in the 
ever-widening revelation of the will of God, He 
perfects His manifestation in the ever increasing 
fullness of the Spirit of God. In the measure 
that we live in His will in that measure will we 
be filled with His life. We thus have His great- 
est manifestation in proportion as we keep His 
greatest commandment. As we approximate the 
one we approach the other; as we fulfill the one 
we are filled with the other. Because we save 
our own life we lose the fullness of the Christ 
life. But as we give up our own life we gain His 
Divine life. The Macedonians had learned this 
secret. May our Lord help us to learn it also. 



106 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

Rjev^i^ATioisr. 

''First * unto the Lord * * and then * ^ the 
will of God" 

After they had yielded themselves to God, they 
saw the will of God, for their lives. This is ever 
true of all His children. After dedication, trans- 
formation ; after transformation, revelation. Ded- 
ication brings fullness of life. In its wake comes 
fullness of light. It is not the dull intellect but 
the rebellious or unyielding will which keeps us 
from the light of God's plan for our lives. 

God has a plan for every life in His Kingdom. 
In Ephesians 2: 10 He tells us that we are 
"created in Christ Jesus unto good works which 
God hath before ordained that we should walk 
in them." For Christ Jesus, His Son, God had a 
perfect plan from before the foundation of the 
ages. He knew that plan; He yielded Himself 
to it; and he walked in it, not only day by day, 
but hour by hour of His earthly career. "Are 
there not twelve hours in the day?" said our 
Lord, thus showing that not only was His life 
meted out to Him day by day by the Father, but 
that each hour coming to Him was part of a 
perfect plan for His life, extending even to the 
minutest detail. But if God had a perfect plan 
for Christ Jesus, our Lord, so also has He for 
every one who at regeneration is created in 
Christ Jesus. If there is a plan for the Divine 
Head of the body, so there must needs be one for 
each member of that body. And such, by God's 



THE BELIEVER'S GIFT TO GOD. 107 

grace, are we. Wherefore from the eternal ages 
the Divine Architect has laid up in the archives 
of heaven a perfect plan for the life of every 
child of His, from its beginning through its eter- 
nal and unending existence in the ages to come. 
"In all the ages there never has been, nor never 
will be a man or woman just like me. I am unique. 
I have no double." How true is this for you who 
are a child of God. God has a fresh life plan 
for you, distinct from every other human being 
in the universe. No man or woman in existence 
can do your God-ordained work. There will be 
something missing from the glory of heaven, 
something lacking from its fruitage, if you do 
not find and walk in that Divinely created plan 
in Christ Jesus for your life. Why then are so 
many of God's children ignorant of such plan? 
Why are they in darkness concerning His will? 
W^hy have they never seen the good works in 
which they are to walk? We answer with an 
illustration. Imagine a man coming to a great 
industrial establishment in search of employ- 
ment. He seats himself on the curb-stone across 
the street. All through the morning hours he 
loiters there. Then at high noon he approaches 
the superintendent of the works and begins to 
complain because he has not been shown the 
work he is to do. Very soon would the superin- 
tendent of such an establishment inform the loi- 
terer that as soon as he would come and offer 
himself, his time, skill, and talents to his em- 
ployer, then would the latter show him what 



108 THE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

work he had for him to do. "For," says the su- 
perintendent, "we do not show our plans, nor 
assign ou* work to a man until he comes and 
places himself at our disposal. Until that time, 
sir, you cannot expect us to show you what work 
we have for you." Is not this the open secret of 
the failure of many of God's children to know 
His will for their lives ? So long as they remain 
unyielding to Him, not offering themselves for 
His service. He does not, nor could He reason- 
ably be expected to reveal the work He has for 
them in His vineyard. But as soon as they pre- 
sent their bodies a living sacrifice, placing will, 
time, talent and skill all at His disposal, to be 
used for His glory. He is only too glad to dis- 
close His own loving plan of ministry for the 
life offered to Him. "If any man will to do my 
will he shall know." 

Ministration. 
''First. .. .unto the Lord, and then unto us." 

To every dedicated child of His, Cod not only 
reveals His plan for their life, but also leads 
them into the doing of it, usually by some seem- 
ingly insignificant beginning. This was true for 
the Macedonians. First, unto the Lord — the per- 
son to whom they gave themselves ; then, unto us, 
the thing which He showed them to do, in this 
case a simple ministering to the needs of His 
saints. This is likewise true for all of us. Note 
the case of Paul: First there was the query of 



THE BELIEVER'S GIFT TO GOD. 109 

dedication : ''Who art thou ;" and the answer — ''I 
am Jesus, I am thy Lord." Then came the query 
of ministration — "What wilt thou have me to 
do." And then the answer, a command to do a 
very simple thing, "Arise, go into the city and 
it shall be shozvn thee what thou shalt do." 

Take again the example of David. Picture 
the prophet coming into the home of the shep- 
herd lad to anoint him as the king of a great 
nation. What a wonderful honor for one so 
young, to be called from the obscurity of his 
humble occupation to become the head of his 
people. As the prophet's hand was laid upon 
him; as the anointing of oil touched his bowed 
head; as the consciousness of the presence of 
God's Spirit in new power and blessedness 
thrilled his heart, what a great and solemn mo- 
ment it must have been for the young David. 
A moment of dedication, of transformation, of 
revelation, of God's wondrous, gracious, and, to 
him, astounding purpose for his life. And yet 
as the days and weeks rolled on there came no 
great change in the environment of that life. 
There was no great vision ; no voice from heaven ; 
no burning bush. We can imagine him com- 
muning with himself. "Is this a reality? Am 
I in very truth the King of Israel? Why does 
not God take me hence? Why does He not put 
me upon my appointed throne? Why am I kept 
waiting here?' And then something happened. 
The shepherd lad was called to carry the needed 
supplies to his warrior brothers. How insigni- 



110 TEE SURRENDERED LIFE. 

ficant and commonplace seems this incident. Yet 
out of it God led him to his destined place. It 
was the first step in the golden stair-case which 
led upward to a kingly throne. He met his 
brethren; he heard the boastful challenge of the 
giant; his heart was mightily moved by the 
Spirit of God, and we know what followed. 

Even so is it with us. We give our lives to 
God in dedication. Peace, power, and blessing 
inflow. But no great change m.eets us at once. 
Still we keep the sheep; we follow the plough; 
we sit at the desk; we pursue our daily task as 
of old. We wonder what it all means. Has God 
really a work for us ? Will He really show it to 
us? Will He lead us into it? And now some- 
thing happens to us, even as to David. A door 
of service opens. Perhaps but a modest door, 
a little wicket gate, a«: it were, of ministry. It 
may be a call to teach a class ; to lead a meeting ; 
to fill some humble place of service for the Lord. 
But now, as it comes, there is a new drawing in 
our heart to do this thing. There is a con- 
sciousness of God's call to it, however humble. 
There is a feeling that it has more significance 
in our lives than its humbleness would indicate. 
And so we obey. God blesses our obedience. 
We follow on and on. Opportunities multiply; 
the blessing grows ; fruitage follows ; the joy of 
service is with us and by and by we awake to the 
glad consciousness that God is leading us into 
our life work. 



"The Three Fold Secret of the Holy Spirit," 
a companion volume, by the same author, sent 
to any address, on application, upon the same 
conditions as "The Surrendered Life." 



LEAFLETS BY THE SAME 
AUTHOR. 



Surrender 

The Yielded Life 

Prayer 

The Coming of Christ as a 
Comforting Truth 



OCT 94 ^nf^9 ^ ^ 

pass it Hlong. 

[ If you wish to write the names of a list of friends 
upon this page and let "The Surrendered Life" pass 
from one to another in the order written, we will gladly 
send you another copy for your own personal use, on 
application.] 



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